We came to Mendoza for what it’s most known for: wine. With our eyes fixed on the prize, we completely underestimated what else this city had to offer. Gorgeous parks, plentiful plazas, and more olives and olive oil than we knew what to do with. We hit the jackpot with our last stop of our Argentinian adventure.
Strolling through some of Mendoza’s five main plazas, our tour guide shared insights on the city’s complicated relationship with Europe. She described many people in Argentina striving to reach some sort of “European Dream” by emulating aspects of European culture despite previous tensions and dependency that caused hardships.
Olive Oil
We pieced together our own olive oil tasting tours over two days filled with olive oil and wine. In total, we visited three different olivícolas (olive oil producers) and came out the other side as semi-official olive oil snobs. (Okay, not really, but we definitely prefer strong, bitter flavors!)
Pasrai Olivícola Boutique
Our first stop was a small family-run business offering free tours. By chance, it turned into a private tour, which meant we could ask lots of questions. We learned about both the new and old methods of olive oil production and discovered that being classified as “extra virgin” has nothing to do with the olive variety—it’s all about keeping the acidity level below 0.8%, a feat accomplished through careful temperature control.
We sampled nearly ten different varieties of olive oil, all made exclusively in-house. We sampled single-origin oils made with Argentine-grown olives, infused oils with flavors like lemon and spicy pepper, and everything in-between.
Olivícola Simone
Our second stop (also free) came right after Pasrai, which turned out to be great timing since this tour was entirely in Spanish. Here, we sampled six different olive oils and six types of olives. These were the boldest flavors of the day and easily our favorite overall.
We also tried unsalted olives for the first time and learned there’s no such thing as “green olives.” Turns out, all olives start green and ripen to purple over time. Our olive knowledge may have been lacking at the start of the day, but we left with a newfound appreciation (and a huge jar of olives).
LAUR Olivícola
We saved the most renowned olivícola for last. Ranked #1 in the region, LAUR came with a small fee for its tour and tasting, but it was well worth it. Though the olive oil-making process was already familiar to us by this point, we loved learning about the 4,000-year-old olive tree in Greece. (A trip to Greece, anyone?). The oldest trees on the property here were 100 years old.
This was the only place we visited that also produces balsamic vinegar, and getting a behind-the-scenes look at their process was fascinating. The tasting included eight pure olive oils (no flavored varieties) and four types of balsamic vinegar. This was our only pure tasting just trying them all with a spoon, and wow were they good. The smoky balsamic was pretty unforgettable.
Wine
Mendoza is synonymous with Malbec, but truthfully, we didn’t know much about it before coming here. Now, we can confidently say: we like it quite a lot.
Just as we did with olive oil, we pieced together our own wine tasting tour, visiting three vineyards on foot.
Casa Cobos – Bodega Sillon
For just $5, we got a tour of the vineyard, an overview of the winemaking process, and three wine samples. This vineyard doesn’t produce its own wine but grows grapes for five different wineries. Here, we discovered that we do enjoy slightly sweet wines (to our surprise) and tried Argentina’s signature Torrontés for the first time. Delicious!
Bodega Tempus Alba
This stop offered a self-guided tour of the five main steps of winemaking (harvesting, crushing/pressing, fermentation, clarification, and aging/bottling). This place had a beautiful balcony overlooking the vineyard, where we enjoyed samples of their Malbec Rosé, Malbec, and Reserva blend. Paired with a surprise serving of olive tapenade and fresh bread, it was the perfect afternoon treat.
Bodega MEVI
For our final stop, we went all out with a tasting of five wines: Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Sauvignon Rosé, Chardonnay, Tempranillo, and of course, Malbec. In our (very professional) opinion, they were all excellent, but the Malbec and Tempranillo were the clear standouts.
Overall, and perhaps unsurprisingly, all the wines specific to this region and Argentina more broadly were delicious. We had never heard of Torrontés and Tempranillo before, and we were definitely wrongly sleeping on Malbec prior to this. Thankfully after a bit of wine filled afternoon we were able to take a $1 bus back to the center of Mendoza. What a brilliant public transportation system.
With some sadness, our time eating and drinking our way through Argentina had come to an end. It was time to take one more long bus ride to Chile where we’d spend our final few days in South America.