bicicletas y bodegas / bicycles and vineyards

Day 2 in Mendoza. Emily, Sam, and I get driven out to Maipu, Mendoza, a town about thirty minutes outside of the main city of Mendoza, and dropped off at Mr. Hugo's bike shop. Mr. and Mrs. Hugo rent out bikes to tourists, outfitting them with a bike, helmet, map of the area, suggestions, and discount coupons. After we were all registered and paid, Mr. Hugo himself gave us a pat on the back, a warm smile, and wave telling us to enjoy our day.

We started riding our bikes on a quite busy road towards our first stop of the day, Bodega La Rural. La Rural is a very large and very old vineyard; they also own many other vineyards including Rutini and San Felipe (which have two of my favorite wines!). After turning off the main road, we got our first sight of greenery as we drove on a beautiful street with vineyards on both sides towards La Rural.

 After propping our bikes at the "bike parking", we took a tour of the vineyard and its museum (in Spanish) to learn about the history of the vineyard, the wine-making process, and at the end got to try a couple of different wines! La Rural was a great first stop of the day, but we were ready to move on.

Our next stop was at Entre Olivos" which makes olive oil, products with olives, chocolates, and liqueurs. I enjoyed trying a couple different types of olive oils, dulce de leche and banana liqueur, and lemon and strawberry chocolate. My friend Emily is a huge chocolate lover, this was her favorite stop by far!

Biking fun!

Next, we headed to Familia Di Tommaso which is one of the oldest vineyards in the area.  It is so old that they don't even make wine at this location anymore, instead they store wine bottles inside of their tanks. We took a tour of their vineyard (this time in English) which finished with a wine tasting with an extremely knowledgable sommelier.

never ending vineyards - Familia Di Tommaso

 At this point, we were starting to get quite hungry so headed to the vineyard Mevi for lunch and more wine tastings.

 On the way to Mevi, we had passed the vineyard Vina el Cerno so we decided to check it out on our way back. "Bienbebidos" wins my award for best sign of the day!

 Our last stop of the day before returning our bikes was at the cutest beer garden literally in the middle of nowhere. We relaxed underneath their canopied garden 

On our way back from the beer garden, we realized a truck was slowly following us and at second glance, realized it was a police car. Sam and Emily stopped (while I casually kept riding) to ask the police officer if there was a problem. He told them no problem, just want to make sure you guys are safe so I'm going to follow you...a bit sketchy. We all started to ride a bit faster because we weren't sure if it was a hoax, if it was normal to have South American police officers casually following American/British tourists riding their bikes, or really what was going on. As we turned a corner, I politely told the police officer we didn't need his assistance anymore but thank you so much. He drove away but when we arrived back at Mr. Hugo´s, he was there talking with Mr. Hugo (cue picture with the police truck).

 Mr. Hugo and the police officer never said anything to us so we still don't quite understand what had happened. So we can now report that we had a police officer escort in Mendoza which added a bit of adrenaline to our day.

This pretty much sums up our day of wine tasting...it was the best day
I´ve had in Argetina so far!