Wine Tasting

    One of our prepaid for excursions with IFSA is going to one of the bodegas in Mendoza to do a wine tasting, which is the only time we've been permitted to consume alcohol during a program event. However, we were warned to control our consumption or we would be left at the winery. We were only offered two samples so this wasn't even an issue. We went to the vineyard Zuccardi, which is a huge winery in Maipu that is family owned and really promotes being sustainable economically and environmentally. We took a tour of where they make the wine, the barreling process, and then tried a pinot gris, a red wine, and a dessert wine, which were all delicious. I've really come to like red wine here, which I expected to happen, since Malbec is famous here and red wine is a lot more popular. The first bodega I went to in Mendoza back in August taught us to smell the wine and look at the wine and taste the wine properly, finding what aromas are in the wine, but this tasting didn't teach us this much. But we were able to distinguish green apple in the white wine, and wood in the red. Now that its spring all of the wineries have beautiful leaves and grapes growing, and it looks so much prettier than when I first saw the wineries in the winter with all the dead leaves. If you drive anywhere outside the city, all the land is covered in either vineyards or olive trees.
    After the tasting, we went to the restaurant at the vineyards for a 10 course meal, not exaggerating. We were all starving, and running late, so all the plates came out really fast and all at once. I was double fisting two kinds of sandwiches at one point. We were first served bread with various toppings; tapenade, sun dried tomatoes, picked eggplant and olives. Then a cheese plate, salami plate, a pork covered in a mayonnaise sauce, a tuna and walnut sandwich, and beef and mustard sandwich, a fried mashed potatoes and chicken roll thing, then two desserts of a fresh fruit salad, then peaches and cream. I had a massive food baby, and the bus ride home was the most uncomfortable feeling.