Wine, cheese, and euchre: a week with Phil and Catherine

Where to begin? Wine, wineries, cabins in the woods, downtown steak dinners, coffees in the plaza, hikes in the mountains, futbol games, Chandon champagne, olive oil tastings...it was an action-packed week. For a guy used to serving wine only at church, Phil, Amy’s dad, a Presbyterian minister from Ontario, it was a tough slog. The chilled rose for lunch, followed by afternoon wine and cheese, only to be capped off by a bottle or two of Argentina’s finest malbec blends for dinner was more wine than he had consumed since his days as a wild and crazy kid at seminary school. Sleeping through the afternoons like a bloated baby full of mother’s milk was his only lifeline. Ah the Argentine life...one really does have to work up to it.


And so it was, a week with Amy’s parents in Mendoza and environs. We really could not have chosen a better spot for a rendezvous with the folks. Mendoza is one of those places where mountains collide with plains providing a wonderful mix of geography, scenery, and activities. And, needless to say at this point, it’s wine country! Can’t go wrong there.


A highlight of the week was our base – a woodsy cabaña in the Andean foothills about 40 minutes outside the city near the village of Potrerillos. A beautiful mixed desert-mountain-cottonwood-creek landscape dotted with funky restaurants and cabins. For those of you from the Koots, it’s their Slocan Valley. And, as luck would have it, the place is owned and run by a gal, Jane, from Toronto, and her husband Oscar, an Argentine. No doubt it’s Jane’s Canadian influence that gives the cabins a real woodsy feel to them complete with a streamside deck with a view of the Andes, fireplace, and duvet-covered beds. Felt like home. All in all, a wonderful place for morning coffee in the sun, and to-the-death afternoon wine-and-cheese Euchre games. Also a great spot for Phil to collapse into his afternoon naps J


The cabaña of course is equipped with the obligatory asado. No Argentine would be caught dead without one. In a “when in Rome” moment, we decided to pretend we’re Argentines and bought some asado cuts (ribs are big here for asados). Phil and I manned the fire. Asados are a back-to-basics deal. No charcoal and lighter fluid, and definitely, absolutely definitely no propane. This is a cook-over-the-coals of a wood fire situation. We thought we were doing a pretty good job, and the beers and the grill-side father-in-law bonding were great, but alas, the burnt offerings delivered at mealtime were lacking. Not our best meal. I guess there’s more to it than our “I am Canadian” propane barbecues had prepared us for. The ladies were sure the 1-hr cooking time wasn’t long enough...Argentines are known for slow and sure asados. Ah well, next time!


Having been in the area for about a month now, we could be charging for our guiding services these days. Based on our previously acquired intel, we took Phil and Catherine to places we knew and loved. One such place we had scoped out on our bikes – Clos de Chacras – a beautiful winery near Lujan de Cuyo, became the sight of Amy’s celebratory birthday lunch. The tasting menu – 6 wines paired with gourmet dishes – was the perfect way to bring in Amy’s 37^th year (OK, stop doing the math on how much older I am than her). It was the fourth course, a malbec-cabernet-merlot blend, that has now become the best bottle of wine we have had in Argentina, which pretty much places it in the top-ten anywhere for us. At 8-bucks a bottle, it’s also the most expensive bottle we have had here...but still a joke at that price. It will be impossible for us to buy wine in Canada now. Do we have to leave?


Back in our Mendoza base we got back just in time to make our way to a soccer game, or shall we say: futbol. Soccer is to Argentina what hockey is to Canada. They are futbol crazy here. The local Mendoza team, Godoy Cruz, is in Argentina's Primera Division – Argentina’s top league. Given that Argentina has won the World Cup several times and is currently ranked 3^rd in the world, this is high-calibre futbol. A dark side of Argentina futbol, however, is hooliganism – a very bizarre, but very real aspect of futbol here and elsewhere. For some insane reason, futbol hooliganism is a “thing” (google it) and it makes attending soccer matches here dangerous. We were warned by everyone we encountered to be very careful, and definitely do not sit in the popular section of the stadium, which are the cheap seats behind the goal posts. That’s where all the hooligans go. So we opted for the platea, which are the more expensive front-and-centre seats – also the most heavily guarded. Heavily armed riot police were everywhere. It was quite the party in the popular though, complete with a full Samba band, streamers, flags, and screaming fans. Never a quiet moment the entire game. Amy wanted to be with the hooligans and said we were “missing the party” by being in the safe seats. But I think Phil and Catherine were just fine with our seats J No one got hurt and we survived our first ever South American futbol game. Oh, and we won 1-0 on an exciting penalty kick!


All good things must come to an end...unfortunately. The parents fly out tomorrow. That’s our queue to load up the horses and head west over the hump (Los Andes) towards Chile and say good-bye to Argentina. After almost 3 months of near-continuous wine and cheese, we’re actually both looking forward to getting back on the bikes. Time to get the blood out of our livers and back into our legs. While the 3000-m climb to the border is daunting, it’s the weather that is putting the fear of god into us. Winter is coming to this part of the world, and quickly. No doubt it’s going to be chilly at 3000 or 4000 m, and might just be winter up there. Yikes! Ah well, that’s what buses are for...we’ll see how it goes. Alrighty then, as always, more on that mission soon.