Mendosa, Argentina is the world’s home for Malbac wine and been on our list to visit for many years. I actually had planned a trip for 2009, but instead accepted a job in Carlsbad New Mexico. So instead of South America, I took Reva to Southwestern America (US). Anyway, since we had a couple of days in Santiago and Mendosa was only a 40-minute flight, we took off for a weekend.
Everyone seems to love Mendosa. Its focus on wine, with lots of sunshine and its location in the foothills of the Andes make it an easy destination. The flights from Santiago were about $70 each way and the hotels are inexpensive even though there aren’t many US brands in the city. I used booking.com and found a highly rated hotel (Abril Boutique) for $55 a night including breakfast located in the center of the town.
Uber works great in South America and the airport transfer to the hotel was around $10 each way. Here, the Uber drivers were also cab drivers so both times we were picked up by cabs. Mendosa has a very small airport, so it took almost no time to get through immigration and get to the hotel. The hotel rooms were small but clean and the front desk staff were very helpful. We had left our bags in Santiago at the Wyndham Hotel since we were returning there in just two days and just traveled with backpacks.
Mendosa is a pedestrian friendly City centered around 5 main squares (parks) with a much larger nature park not far from the center of the town. It is a big city however and aside from the parks, not necessarily the prettiest. But it certainly felt save enough and it was very much had a “party” atmosphere with lots of nightclubs and restaurants and even fountains with wine colored water flowing out of them.
The main square (park) in the City has a large fountain with a free water and laser light show nightly. A few block away from the central square there are four smaller squares (parks) Everything was symmetrical. Each of the smaller squares had a theme and were very nice. The best two were the Italian and the Spanish ones.
If you walked from the Center toward the Italian Square, the main road headed out toward the nature park and through the entertainment district by the University. Here you had lots of restaurants. On our explorations we stopped at Emilla’s Smashburgers and possibly had the best burger I had ever tasted…after all this is Argentina and meat is king.
Of course, we were here for the wine and the hotel had a nice courtyard, so we put it to use and planned our next day’s adventure.
I booked a 6-hour wine and olive oil tour through Viator ($35 each) for the following afternoon and that left us the morning to explore the City.
Again, it was easy city to navigate and we explored each of the squares.
The wine tour bus picked us up at our hotel and we joined about 20 others on this tour to three wineries and an olive oil production facility. The tour was good, but there are so many wineries and so many different ways to visit them. There is actually a wine bus that stops at the various tasting rooms and makes a routine circuit, also there are many bike tours through the region. There are also three different wine making areas to visit in the area, each with many different wineries. This is a South American version of California’s Napa Vally. Basically, a wine lover’s paradise!
At each winery, we had a quick tour with multiple tastings. Each visit lasted about 45 minutes to an hour. None of the wine was very expensive, $8-$20 a bottle. There were many tour busses circulating around the area but there were never more than two groups at any winery.
The total cost for this weekend trip with airfare was less than $500. Not a bad add on from Santiago. If I was to do it again, I might consider an extra day and possibly stay at one of the boutique hotels at a winery and take the bus, a bike or Uber to other wineries…. definitely worth another visit.
