We have now arrived in Mendoza, the wine capital of Argentina, so naturally we decided to do a spot of wine tasting. Wine is in no way my specialist subject. Saying that, I’m not a complete novice. I can correctly identify between a red and a white 95% of the time (35% if blindfolded). But luckily for me, Tom and Kitty were also amateurs in the world of wine tasting so we decided it was about time we got educated and booked ourselves onto a tour.
We liked the idea of a hotel pickup so we selected our tour and after a fairly arduous wait our transport eventually arrived. The reason for the delay soon became apparent - Half the coach party recently received hip replacements and the other half were severely suffering from arthritis. This caused the boarding process at each pick up to take considerably longer than expected. I was the youngest person on board by at least 50 years and one of the only people still in possession of my own teeth. We somehow managed to book ourselves onto the silver hair tour, but then I suppose wine tasting isn’t exactly the most ‘hip’ or ‘happenin’ activity. I checked the seat, to ensure there hadn't been an accident involving a weak bladder on a previous outing, sat down, and off we went to the vineyard.
We visited several wineries, I had my cheek nipped several times and it eventually turned out to be quite a nice outing. An American couple took a fondness to Tom due to his spitting resemblance to a member of the royal family and Kitty hit it off with an obese man who probably wasn’t allowed in such close proximity of young females under normal circumstances. But the highlight was when we arrived at the Bodegas Lopez winery and we had a tasting and etiquette lesson from an amazingly beautiful Argentinian Lady.
Tom had confessed prior to the tour that he didn’t mind a white but reds severely disagreed with his pallet. Now here's a few facts for you -
- According to the experts, a good red wine compliments red meat perfectly.
- Argentina is one of the worlds largest producers of Beef.
- Beef is a red meat.
- Argentinians love steak and eat it frequently.
- Mendoza produces 95% red wine and 5% white wine due to supply and demand.
- Tom had wasted his money.
The Bodegas Lopez winery produced hundreds of litres of red wine each year and our lovely guide was very informative about the whole production process. The remarkable thing was that Tom, a man who previously confessed his dislike for red wine, now took a real keen interest in every aspect of it all of a sudden.
Tom spent the entire tour asking ridiculous questions just so he could talk to her. “How much did this big barrel cost?”, “Where do grapes come from?”, “What’s the biggest grape you’ve ever seen?”, “How much did this small barrel cost?”. Tom had it in his head that this poor girl was in to him and in my opinion he was getting a little big for his boots. Being the youngest on the bus I decided that resorting to immaturity was perfectly acceptable so I grabbed some stickers from the wine bottles and placed them on Toms back. I’ll let the photos explain the rest:
“So babe, what does wine come in?”
“Normally in bottles Mr Vincent, like the ones on the shelf behind you.”
“Thanks, what an amazing fact. I’ll just head over there and have a look. Check you later”
‘She keeps grinning, I’m definitely in here. If I read this whole book then I’ll know as much about wine as she does. We have so much in common’
“Look at that silly English man over there, he has a little sticker on his back and looks like prince Harry. I can’t stop smirking”
‘She’s smiling so much she looks like she's swallowed a coat hanger. Who Da Man’
It took poor Tom several hours before he realised he had been labelled as a 2004 Malbec. Roughly the same amount of time taken to hoist every other passenger on board via the stair lift and for us to arrive back at the hostel slightly merry.
