It's summertime somewhere

I'll be honest, the past month or so I've done nothing in the vineyard. Absolutely nothing!

BUT, my husband and I did take a major vacation this year, we head down south to do some hiking in Patagonia (South America). On the way home, we stopped by Mendoza, in Argentina, where a huge percent of the world's Malbec comes from. It was a fun and educational stop!

The first thing we learned about Mendoza is that it's a warm, dry climate. They get some rain in the winter, but apparently most water comes from the Andes, down the Mendoza River and into irrigation canals. From most places in Mendoza you can see Aconcagua (hazy peak in background of this shot), it's at 22,800 feet. This means they get good water without nearly the worry of mildew / fungus diseases that we do up here. Lucky farmers.

As far as weather woes, the only thing we noticed is that some of the vines had big black canopies over them. Turns out they are to protect grapes from hail - which apparently is a big concern in this area.

We also noticed that the height of the primary trunks of the vines varied. In California, the primary trunk is almost always hip-level. In Mendoza, many were this same height, but there was a lot of variation - some where as tall as 6 feet, others barely off the ground. Not sure exactly why this is; one grower explained that grape quality varies based on the length of the trunk, but my Spanish wasn't good enough to get more details.

Finally, while Mendoza is on the map as far as good wine locations, my husband and I both became fans of "Patagonian" wines, from an area called Neuquen. It's a bit farther south, so a bit cooler (although we had a bus transfer in that town, and it was easily in the high 90s). One in partulcar wins my admiration for best-named wine: "Del Fin Del Mundo".

Patagonian Wine - who knew?