Argentina
Buenos Aires & Mendoza
Quick facts: New continent allert! South America was a new continent for Tess, Alex had been once before many years ago. The decision to go to Argentina started in a place you wouldn’t think. We were in London looking for a place to eat dinner when Alex found a restaurant with 5 stars that had a cuisine not easily accessible in Sweden – Argentinian food! Yes – Chimichurris inspired us to go to Argentina!
Also, we love wine. And beef.
Trip highlights: Living at the foothills of the Andes in Mendoza, drinking fantastic wine and enjoying the views.
Points: Food 10/10 points, Local wine 10/10 points – more on this at the end. Yes we ranked them and yes it’s very organized.
Buenos Aires
We started our trip in the capital on a Sunday morning after a 13 hour flight. First thing we learned was – not much is open at 8 am on a Sunday. So, out first meal in Argentina – Starbucks.
After walking around for a while we decided to acquire a sim card. Since we both can get by a little bit on our tourist Spanish, but we realized that being able to translate and navigate might be helpful.
Turns out activating a sim card is close to impossible. But, eventually we succeeded and we highly recommend getting this – it’s super cheap (15 sek + 30 sek for data that lasted us the whole two weeks) and makes everything much easier if you’re not fluent. Most people at hotels and cafes speak English but far from everyone, specially outside of Buenos Aires.
Walking around the streets of Palermo Soho in Buenos Aires was great. Murals everywhere, cute streets surrounded by greenery. And, not all murals were of Maradona or Messi.
First asado
For lunch the first day we did better. We got a tip from our taxi driver about a place close to where we were staying so we decided to try it out. Service was very good – although we could only understand like 20% of what they were saying, because even though we said we did not speak Spanish – they kept speaking Spanish, very fast.
It was charming and they just. kept. bringing. food.
We had our first bottle of Malbec and liked it so much we decided to bring a bottle back to Sweden. More on that later.
Restaurant is called Vittorino and we highly recommend it!
Italian
We’re just warning you – food and wine will be a recurring topic here. More specifically grilled meats and Malbec – or so we thought.
Argentina also has a lot of Italian restaurants so pasta was on the menu – and gelato. We kept close by to our hotel the first day and found La Baita, a cozy place with good food and great gelato.
SOHO Hotel
For our first few nights we stayed in Palermo SOHO, at the SOHO hotel. Fitting, right?
The hotel was decent, and we have no real complaints. The one thing we had a real issue with was the noice, these was no sound proofing either towards the street or the rest of the hotel. So if you go during the Argentinian summer, you might struggle to sleep due to street noice.
They did have a proper bakery on the ground floor so breakfast was really good.
Food tour
You know it. New country – new food tour. We choose to do one in Palermo, there are some different ones depending on where you are staying, and we wanted to try some classics that we might miss otherwise. It wasn’t our main objective but we also met some people, a father with his daughters from the UK, a guy from Panama and a woman from NYC. Our guide was very bubbly and talked a lot. She taught us to always change the bottle, which means to always try a new wine. We tried to take that to heart – resulting in us trying over 60 different wines.
First stop had really good bread and a pepper and olive oil dish as well as empanadas. They also had a wine called Litro de vino, made with the grape Torrontes – which was a new grape for us, and we really enjoyed it. Flavorful and light. A white wine but “not really white”. Don’t know exactly what that means.
After that we moved on to the meat district, where we started with a classic milanese, cheese pie and a tortilla. We ate this place made famous recently when Dua lipa ate there.
Of course there was an Asado stop, red wine, gelato and more murals. Apparently there is a unspoken rule that if you commission someone to create a mural on our wall, no one will put graffiti on it. Pretty cool.
Two happy gelato faces. And, the gelato hatch where you can pick ut gelato all hours of the day and night.
Niño Gordo
After successfully changing money for the first time (hyper inflation is crazy) we had one of our best meals in BA.
Niño Gordo is an Asian grill that offers a mix of oriental flavors combined with Buenos Aires cuisine. At Niño Gordo, dishes from Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese and Thai cuisine are combined with a local touch.
The food was fantastic and we had a wine called The party that both of us really enjoyed. The restaurant has a little bit of a wait if you don’t have a reservation, but the food makes it worth the wait along with the cool vibe of this place.
El Ateneo
El Ateneo used to be a theater. Now, you might be surprised to see that we didn’t eat food or drink wine there – although you could if you wanted to. It’s a really cool place that now is operating as a bookstore. A very nice bookstore and we would’ve loved to buy something, but naturally everything was in Spanish.
They have a restaurant in what used to be the stage with a cool light show covering the entire wall.
San Telmo
When we decided were to stay in Argentina the two options we looked at were Palermo and San Telmo. San Telmo is an area with a lot of restaurants and bars, and more bohemian than the more trendy Palermo.
Even if we decided not to stay here we knew we had to visit. Mainly to experience the food market!
At the food market we tried more empanadas, our first Choripán, and most fun – the wine window. A beautiful place that we highly recommend visiting!
Fogon
And now to the main event! A Michelin star restaurant serving Asado. What an experience!
At Fogon you sit around the grill and they cook, plate and serve you live. It’s very fun to see, they are super friendly and fun and you leave super full with a smile on your face.
We also got to make “our own” Chimichurri and try a lot of really nice wines.
The meat was exceptional and the only dish none of us cared for was the blood sausage and sweet bread. Everything else was top notch.
Mendoza
Flying to Mendoza from Buenos Aires we got to experience our first football focused safety video. Very Argentinian and very funny.
We also got upgraded to extra legroom just based on the fact that they thought we were tall, both ways. We won’t say no to that.
Landing in Mendoza you know you are in wine country, and wine we drank!
You have to watch your step in Mendoza since they have deep open trenches for allt he water that melts from the mountains. Which looks pretty cool. First stop was our Airbnb and then lunch. For our first dinner we got a tip from our host and it was a fantastic dinner! We love recommendations from locals!
Wine tour 1
Casarena
Second stop on the wine tour with some of our favorite wines. We rolled into Lujan de Cuyo and onto a much bigger property, which turns out was one of four properties that they have. Each with completely different soil, as you can see further down in the photo with four glas containers. This gave the answer to one of our questions about how each wine can taste so different when its from the same area and made by the same grape. It’s the soil that makes the difference.
The four vineyards are named after the owners grandchildren, and the wine we bought to bring home was from his latest property where he was told it was impossible to grow vines and make wine. He still wanted to look out over wine racks and planted them anyway. Turns out he could make an excellent wine on that land.
Terrazas de los Andes
Time for lunch! A three course meal with wine paring – of course – in a beautiful lunchroom. We loved the wine and the food was good, not great. I mean, we might not be so use to eating tongue.
We won’t say no to double dessert though, and the dessert wine was fantastic!
There were also a lot of dogs on and around the vineyards and when we asked if they belonged to anyone our guide said not really, they are like cats, they get fed here and there and pretty much roam free.
Budeguer
Last stop on the tour and yes – we are a little tipsy at this point, in a pleasant way. Which might be why we have a slightly lesser memory of these wines. Only one we remember making a mark on our taste buds. It was a pretty cool place though and we enjoyed the tour as a whole. Thanks to our guide and driver!
The company we booked it with was Trout & wine.
Mendoza city
We were told that Mendoza has 340 sunny days a year. Here’s the weather the first few days after arriving:
Sunday: Rain
Monday: Rain
Tuesday: Clouds and rain
Wednesday: Clouds
Anyway. We took a walk around and explored Mendoza city and despite the rain it’s kind of a cool place. With blue water fountains. One thing we learned that’s good to know if you also go in end of winter is that they don’t really insulate their houses, so bring slippers. Also, the walls are paper thin so every noice from outside – also inside. But we liked our time here and we could kind of get by with limited Spanish and hand gestures – not much English spoken here though, which added to the charm.
Trivento
Before leaving Mendoza for the wine country, we decided to book a fancy lunch at a nearby vineyard, one of the biggest wine producers around.
This ended up being a really good idea, if you are in Mendoza – go to Trivento!
It was a super cool room and both the food and wine was fantastic. I could go back just for the bread.
Andeluna
The moment we’d been waiting for! Staying right in the middle of a vineyard at the foothills of the Andes. Even if the mountains were hiding for the first day, and we had a small worry we wouldn’t get to see them, this was the highlight of our whole trip!
After a very chatty taxi driver took us from Mendoza to The Uco Valley – chatting in Spanish by the way, thank god for Google translate voice recording – we arrived to a very warm welcome at Andeluna. We got some tasty snacks and our first glass of Andeluna wine. Very tasty all around!
The name Andeluna is inspired by the poetic merger between the most extensive mountain range on the planet and the moon that bathes it in light. Pretty cool.
The main building had a great look, very lodge like with warm tones and a bit of a rustic feel. We really liked it.
The room
After a delicious lunch we arrived to our room, or house, or lodge, depends how you look at it. In the middle of the vine racks and looking a bit futuristic.
The room was great and had everything you might need as well as a terrace and big glass windows facing the Andes.
And also a small bottle of free wine. I mean, they know their audience.
Chocolate and food
We started our stay with a chocolate and wine tasting which started with a tour of the facilities, and a tasting in a beautiful tasting room.
There was a welcome snack waiting for us in our room every time we got back, which is a very nice touch.
We were the only two people doing the tasting and our guide was so sweet and taught us a lot about their wines and why they tasted different in combination with different chocolates. The chocolates were locally produced as well – another nice touch.
We tasted a total of 6 wines, all in our list rated and reviewed. There was several activities to choose from and we were very happy we did this one.
Everyone working at Andeluna was so nice and friendly and they help set our whole schedule up, booking tastings, transportation, recommending restaurants etc. Top notch service!
At breakfast we could order hot food and also choose from a great buffet. Of course we had medialunas every morning. It’s like a sweet croissant.
The Andes
We were actually really bummed we didn’t see the mountains the first day and thought – what if we don’t get to see them at all? Cut to the next morning – Alex got up early and very excitedly yelled
– Get up, get up, get up!
There they were – finally! You can see footprints of Alex being so excited he ran outside barefoot.
We got our shoes on and went for a walk around the vineyard to take the mountains in. Such an amazing morning!
Before the fog and clouds rolled in again. But we saw them, and they were so cool!
Sophenia
It’s time! This was our favorite tour of the whole trip! Not just because of the wines – actually not because of the wines at all. Because of our guide Marcelo! He was so funny and we laughed a lot!
We started outside with a rosè while walking around the racks looking at the soil. Marcelo thought we were crazy for biking and after biking up what felt like 10 miles of bumpy dirt/gravel road – we agreed a little. But it felt to long to walk and to short to have someone drive us. So, bike we did.
Anyway, remember Elena telling us that you cannot drink while working at a vineyard? Well, Marcelo outdrank both of us during this tour and we could really tell that wine was his passion. He was a fantastic guide and balanced stories about the wine with humor and fun facts.
At one point we were standing where the wine is fermenting and there were drains on the floor. We hadn’t finished our second glass – a Merlot – so he said – You can just dump it in the drain. I’m my own drain! As he dumped what was left in his glass down his throat. It made us laugh so much!
We finished the tour in a very cool tasting room, and we ended up buying a special wine to bring home. It was a wine that had a really cool story of them trying to do surgery on some wines that went wrong and they ended up with a combination that shouldn’t produce a good wine – but it did and it was called the Anti Synthesis.
The name Sophenia comes from two girls that were best friends in kindergarten, so their fathers named their winery after them. Sweet, right?
La Azul
Time for lunch! Leaving Sophenia Marcelo told us – be carefull at La Azul, you will be drunk! And we understand how, they came out with wine bottles and just left them on the table. Everything was included in lunch, which was amazing – one of the best meals in The Uco Valley. The wine on the other hand – not the best. But, this might be because we just had great wine and were comparing.
The sun came out as we were having lunch and turned a chilly, cloudy day into a warm, sunny, amazing day. The place was beautiful with a big yard you could go out into between courses and enjoy the view and the sun.
Salentein
Last tour of the day was Salentein. The mosts scenic bike ride yet, even if we did go to the wrong building and miss the start of the tour.
This place was impressive! They build the winery underground and it was massive! With really cool architecture and a grand piano in the middle. They actually have concerts there from time to time, which would be cool to experience.
You could tell that this was a much bigger production facility and a more professional company, which made it lacked a little of the charm of some of the other wineries.
Tupangato Divino
On day two of wine tours we had lunch at this small place with their own wine shop with wines from all over the region, and when we were ordering we had to go look at the big board to decide what to drink.
A little overwhelmed we asked for help and the owner pulled several interesting wines. One was from a small producer that only made a limited number of bottles that year, and he said that that was his favorite wine and favorite year. So Los Noques was the choice. It was the best wine yet and one of the best wines we had the entire trip! We even bought another to take home.
The food was fantastic and the place was so cute and private. After lunch we sat outside and shared some more wine in the sun looking at the mountains. It was the perfect day and moment!
The real owner came out to keep us company, an older cat that was super friendly and hung out a while.
We got served our dessert outside in the sun, next to a koi pond, with a cuddly cat, and delicious wine. Can’t get much better than that. We were actually sad to leave, but we had another tour and tasting booked.
Domaine Bousquet
Very happy after our lunch we rode down the road to one of the oldest vineyards around. Domaine Bousquet is a fully organic vineyard that are actually helping all the vineyards in Uco valley to become organic as well.
Our guide was so lovely, and not only guided us through the vineyard and the wines, she also shed some light on how it is to grow up and live in Mendoza. We liked her a lot and this was a great experience.
One thing that also blew us away was that the view of the Andes changed so much depending on the place, even though we really didn’t move very far.
Alex accomplished the impossible here – he successfully petted a cat that quote “never wants pets ever”. This made him very happy.
Casa Petrini
That evening we went for dinner to Casa Petrini, and like at a few other places, we did feel that this was low season for them, which was not a bad thing but sometimes it would have been nicer with some more people in the room for som ambiance.
Casa Petrini is another vineyard and this meal was – again – fantastic. The bread in Mendoza was something else. As well as the meat, of course, but we knew that already.
More Andeluna
Because the last two days, the mountains were out and they were amazing! And it was so quiet, like a deafening quiet. So cool! So, enjoy the Andes and the sun setting over the Andes, like we did.
100% would go back!
Back in BA
Flying back to BA we had a few days to spend and our plan was to experience more areas of the city and do some shopping.
We did this the first day, we went to a market and walked around some of the big sights, like the presidents house and some other cool buildings.
Also bought some nice weekend bags and wines.
Don Julio
Tome for our third over all, second this trip, Michelin star restaurant – Don Julio! This place is famous in Buenos Aires and we can understand why! Everything was so delicious and for reasons we won’t disclose we couldn’t finish the wine, so we got a wine doggy bag.
The restaurant has been around for a long time and has earned its stripes. Located in the middle of the meat district Don Julio started out as a butcher. And, to this day still provides all the restaurants in the area with hight quality beef.
Messi was there once and as soon as word got out there was 3 000 Argentinians surrounding the restaurant. He probably really enjoyed the food, just like us.
Tango
Last night in BA, we had to watch some tango. We went to probably the most touristy place, but it was pretty cool to experience. There was a live band, a old man singer and different tango numbers. From classic sexy tango to fun upbeat tango. All telling a story.
They were very talented and it was impressive to watch. Happy we went, but there are probably more authentic places to go if you find them.
As we rolled past Placa de mayo and the twin monument to the Washington monument in DC, we were very happy, full of wine and great food, ready to go home.
The Wine
Top recommendations
We tried a lot of different wines during our two weeks – and yes, all were rated and photographed. Here are our top four pics, not that we hade bad wine but these were our favorites.
1. Los Noques – Malbec – Cabernet Franc 2013
We both thought that Malbec would be the name of the game, but oh how wrong we were. Turns out we really like Argentinian blends and – Cabernet Franc blends.
This one was the one recommended to us at Tupangato Divino. They had an impressive wine store with a very wide selection of wines from not only Uco Valley but all over the Mendoza area.
We tried this one from 2013, which is old for Argentinian wines, they don’t drink older wines, and we’re also partial to newer wines. That said, we both loved this wine and of course brought a bottle back to Sweden. Waiting for the perfect time to open it.
2. Catena Zapata malbec 2022
Aside from having the coolest design on the label of all the bottles we had, this was a pure malbec. The story is pretty cool as well:
“The epic tale of the noble Malbec grape is like no other, and the label for Catena Zapata Malbec Argentino pays tribute to the variety’s history in France and its rise in Argentina. Four female figures embody different landmarks in the history of the grape. Eleanor of Aquitaine represents the birth of Malbec. She is a strong, Old-World presence, lingering at the bridge in Cahors, where Malbec came into its own. Next, the Immigrant symbolizes the movement to the New World and the unknown explorers and adventurers who connected Europe with the Americas.
Phylloxera personifies the death of Malbec in the Old World, which enabled its rebirth in the new. Finally, there is Bodega Catena Zapata, represented by Adrianna Catena, who depicts birth, earth, and motherhood, sharing the riches of the New World. Today, the Catena family’s fourth generation leads the high-altitude renaissance in Argentina. We are returning Malbec to the sky… where it belongs.”
We brought this one home as well, together with an equally cool box.
3. Benedictus gran corte blend 2019
At Dux fuego in Mendoza, we had one of our favorite reds, and a nice dinner. 95% Malbec and 5% Cabernet Franc, a very flavorful wine that we enjoyed much.
The very heavy bottle nixed this from bringing back to Sweden. We also recommend the food, specially the dessert.
4. Ameri organic syrah 2021
Domaine Bousquet was one of the last wine tastings and tours we did in Uco valley Mendoza. The vineyard is completely organic, and of course so are the wines.
(We’re aware its a Malbec in the photo, but the one we tasted was a Syrah)
This wine is strong in flavor and very bold.
The list
Here is the whole list for those who are as nerdy about this as us.
The poster
As you might know, we always make a poster from our trips, and this is the one from Argentina! Thank you for sharing this trip with us and we hope you enjoy all the photos and stories.
Hugs Therese and Alex!
