...and the rest

The next morning, Wednesday 16th, we are enjoying breakfast on the 10th floor of the hotel, with a spendlid view of Mendoza's rooftops and the foothills of the Andes, when the waitress tells us that someone is waiting for us at reception. It's Mathias, the driver from Uncorking Argentina.

We check out, after a little initial confusion over whether the bill will be transferred to the Hotel El Portal Suites or not, and set off for our first winery. This is Cruzat, where we are met by Mathias's friend Eugenia. Cruzat is a small, relatively new winery that only makes sparkling wine. They have a range of white and rose wines that range from natural (less than 4% sugar) through brut (4-10%) to demi-sec and beyond.

The winery itself is a beautiful modern building made with old stone and old wood, surrounded by a pond. We'll learn through the day that these are common features of Mendoza wineries. It sounds as if wine tourism in Mendoza is a fairly new innovation: most of the people we meet have been in their jobs for only a couple of years and many of the buildings seem to have been designed specifically to accommodate and impress visitors.

The pond is also a common feature. Mendoza province lies in the rain shadow of the Andes and is technically in the middle of a desert. The only way that it can support countless wineries and a city of one and a half million people is through an ingenious network of irrigation channels that bring meltwater down from the mountains. Even then, vines are thirsty plants, and most wineries will only receive water on two to three days a week. To cope with this, every winery has a pond for storing water and many use a drip irrigation system that delivers a steady feed of water to the vines via strategically leaky hoses.

After a tour of the steel vats in which the wine undergoes its first fermentation, the bottle racks in which it undergoes its second, the machine that freezes the neck of the bottle to allow the sediment to be extracted, and the corking and labelling apparatus, Eugenia leads us up to the tasting room. This has a splendid view over the vines, with the foothills of the Andes in the middle distance and the broad, snowcapped peak of La Plata looming over them. Eugenia is a bit of a climber herself, but hasn't tackled Aconcagua, so we talk mountains as much as we talk wine. Cruzat's output is crisp and delicious and a fine way to start the day.

Our next visit is to Renacer, a mid-sized winery where we are presented with glasses of Malbec from three different locations. The wine from Este Mendoza is from around 1,000m and is very mineral and flinty. Next is wine from Lujan do Cujo, which is acidic, astringent and everyone's least favourite. The third wine, from a higher valley, is fruity and round. Our task is to mix the three in some proportion and see how close we can get to Renacer's own mix (though we can't exactly match it, as they have a secret ingredient - 4% of Cabernet Franc in their mix). The transformation that comes from mixing the three is an education in itself; the resulting wine is far more rounded and likeable than any of the individual wines on its own. We share the exercise with an Italian couple and Roman and Toni, who are Filipinos living in Singapore and are here on honeymoon.

Our next stop is Melipal, one of the larger vineyards. They have a wide range of wines, including a late harvest red dessert wine. We receive a five course meal with a different wine with each.

The final stop is Mendel, a very small vineyard that produces only 100,000 bottles per year. The current operation is only a few years old, but the property is old, with adobe buildings and old, pre-phylloxera vines. These are the best wines we've tasted today, and we are delighted to learn that most of their exports go to the UK via the Wine Society - of which Jeremy and I are both members [1]. An excellent end to the day.

Mathias takes us back to Mendoza and the Uncorking Argentina offices, where we meet Caroline, who is a Californian who's lived in Argentina for 20 years. Then we head back to our hotel. In the evening we traipse through the rain to find a sidewalk cafe where we have an indifferent pizza.

The 17th starts with the discovery that Laura Robson is engaged in an epic struggle with 8th seed Kvitova in the Australian Open. We watch until it's 9-all in the third set, but the prospect of missing breakfast draws us away from the telly. In the restaurant, we meet up with Nico again, who has dropped by to arrange a trip to Patagonia for a Grajales client who got to Plaza de Mulas and then developed water on the lungs and was sent down by the medics (and by helicopter). She's disappointed, but determined to make the most of her time in Argentina.

It's our last day, but neither of us feels like doing much with it. We take an extended stroll around town and get a sense of how it hangs together (everything is arranged around a set of 5 public squares, centred on the giant Plaza Independencia with four smaller satellite plazas). We look, without success, for "I climbed Aconcagua" t-shirts in the gear shops. We enjoy a much more satisfactory pizza at the Germanic bar we visited earlier in the week. We have ice creams in one of Mendoza's many celebrated ice cream parlours. We contemplate going to a wine-tasting bar, but the sun isn't high enough over the yard arm.

Eventually, we head out for a couple of beers, and then go for a final, immense, T-Bone steak, washed down with a bottle of Mendel. Well, most of a final, immense T-Bone steak. At 600g, I simply can't eat all of it.

Up early the next morning for our lift to the airport. At this point, it could all get a bit nerve-wracking, but actually the day goes smoothly. The Aerolineas clerk doesn't make a fuss about our bags being overweight, the flight gets away on time, the bags arrive swiftly, we are in time to catch a bus across town from Aeroparque to Pistarini airport, we check in plenty of time (no chance of an upgrade, though) and despite the news stories on Jeremy's Blackberry of flights being cancelled all over the UK, BA deliver us safely back to the UK with only a short delay, most of which we recoup over the Atlantic. I even get a half-decent night's sleep.

In fact, the worst thing that happens on the entire complex journey is that the endless string of announcements about when the duty free will be closing that airlines feel compelled to make in multiple languages on long haul flights prevent me from finishing the film that I'm watching. Bah.

My newly gaunt appearance and three-week beard are enough to confuse the biometric scanners at passport control, but my inadvertent disguise fools neither the Immigration Officer who waits to inspect people who are rejected by the scanner, nor my two elder children, who mob me within seconds of us emerging from customs. Our youngest, Cora, is more circumspect. She does not trust the beard. A couple of hours later she realises that she can grab it and pull on it, and does so, gleefully.

Here endeth the adventure. Thanks to all my readers for following it, and to everyone who's supported my fundraising. If you've enjoyed this blog, please do consider donating if you haven't already done so. My Justgiving page is here.

[1] The International Exhibition Co-operative Wine Society is one of Europe's largest mutual organisations and an excellent way to access top quality wine at very fair prices.