Activities at The Vines of Mendoza Tasting Room were stopped for three weeks… but that's just for tourists, for there was still much going on out of visitor's sight!

While the doors were close for the public,The Vines Tasting Room & Vinoteca team have had an enviable training program scheduled: visiting highly-regarded wineries, tasting wines with the winemakers themselves, and having lunch surrounded by peaceful and refreshing landscapes are parts and parcels of the job everyone would love to have.

Noelia, one of our wine servers, can tell us more about this great wine training experience.


The first winery we visited was Bodega Renacer, where we encountered something quite unusual in Argentina:the paseras. Paseras are straw mats, that is, shadowed, shelf-like structures where selected grapes are scattered so as to be dried simply by the dry Mendocinean air. Such grapes will lately be used for producing the winery's top wine, Enamore, an Amarone-style wine, produced by applying the Italian "apassimento" technique (actually, Enamore is a quasi-anagram of Amarone).

After wandering around the vines and the tanks, we moved on to the cave, where visitors can put the label, the cork and the foil to a bottle (and they do that themselves!), and take it home. Later on we visited the winery's Tasting Room, where asados criollos are offered (and by asados criollos it's meant the real asados, no fancy barbecues, so that you can get a real taste of a true asado). Once settled, we experienced one of the most original and funny offers for visitors: the possibility of producing their own blend. So, as the pseudo-tourists we were, each of us produced their own blend-of-three-region Malbec. The results were varied, and the judgments were real fun!

After the playful wine experience, we had the chance to taste all the winery's wines: the three Malbecs, Punto Final Clásico, Punto Final Reserva – with 10 months in oak barrels (available for purchasing through our on-line store) –, and Renacer – with 24 months in oak barrels –; and Enamore, the Amarone-style blend of Malbec, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah and Bonarda.

We then continued our wine experience in Bodega Ruca Malén, "the young woman's home," according to the legend, where Pablo Cúneo, the loving winemaker, gave us a teaching, informative, and passionate tour. Once inside the winery, we were given a taste of three wines coming directly from the tanks. Afterwards we were offered a special tasting of seven wines, of which only one was in the market – though the others were really promising.

The "exhausting" day finished with an amazing five-course lunch, each course being yummily paired with different wines from the three lines the winery offers: Yauquén, Ruca Malén and Kinien.

Anyway, you don't need to work at The Vines of Mendoza in order to enjoy yourselves in these two wineries. Bodega Renacer and Bodega Ruca Malén offer pleasant and original wine experiences, agreeable for anyone who wants to relish good wines, amazing food, and unforgettable scenery.