Anne and I just returned from our first ever trip to Argentina, my first time to the southern hemisphere. We
spent a couple days in Costa Rica before flying on the Mendoza, a few days there, drove to Bariloche and back, then home via the airport hotel in Lima, Peru, and another night in Costa Rica, poolside, and a lovely midnight transit in LAX, international terminal to terminal 6. Home at 3:30 am. We visited several wineries in the Mendoza area with our friends Maria and Lorena. Maria used to import wines from Mendoza, using her talents to get us into a few very interesting small wineries, and an exclusive winemaker tour of Antigua Bodega in San Juan. Lorena lives in Buenos Aires where she runs a tour agency. She used her talents to get us out of a speeding ticket on the way to San Juan (at best, or the loss of our car and drivers license at worst). Nice work, Lorena! (BTW's, we logged another 7,000 km after this with no more brushes with the law). The winery tour was fascinating. I'm walking around this cement floor wondering what that lid is that I'm walking past. The entire winery is built on a couple dozen subterranean concrete tanks, the walls another series of giant concrete tanks. Total capacity, 5.5 million liters. AB makes Torrontes for another Mendoza winery, Cab and Malbec for it's own label. There is a pretty good chance we'll see some of this wine up here before too long. and once again, I can't see what I'm typing.