Merry Christmas

Wishing you all a very merry and magical Christmas!

Between the vines.....

With lots of Christmas love.

Raine xxx

Time to put a cork in it.....

Our visit to the wine lands of Argentina is coming to an end.

We visited three wineries yesterday, Salentein a huge Dutch owned operation where the wines were average but the architecture of the winery was stunning - producing 1.8M litres of wine a year they are considered to be a medium sized operation.

Salentein - a grand piano wouldn't fit into La Azul.....

Bodega La Azul our second stop of the day may well be my favourite of the whole trip; a tiny family owned fruit producer and wine maker with a lovely little restaurant that sits in the shadows of the Andes. We stopped here for lunch which was superb, a trio of small starters: pumpkin soup, a cheese, black olive and tomato quesadilla and a steak empanada followed by another of the best steaks I've ever had, a rib eye cooked Vuelta y Vuelta (very rare). Each course was complimented by one of the four wines that they produce and when we finished we had the opportunity to taste a fifth, their Malbec Gran Reserva, still in the barrel with two years left (one more in the barrell and one in the bottle) before it will be ready to drink - it tasted good at this stage, I can only imagine how good it will taste in 2015.

Bodega La Azul

Just for you Marc - an arty food photo.

Our third visit was to another big winery called Andeluna set in beautiful grounds and producing some very nice wines. I prefer the smaller boutique wineries where the attention to detail is still paid to their wine production and customer service.

View across the vines

On the way back from the wineries we visited Manzano Historico, a breathtakingly beautiful little place where the liberator and national hero Jose de San Martin supposedly devised his plan to liberate the country under the shade of an apple tree, hence the name Manzano Historico - Historic Apple Tree.

Manzano Historico

Back at our hotel we opted for a power nap and it pains me to say it knowing what the weather is like back at home but it was just too hot to sleep and after an hour or so we decided that our time would be better spent wrapping Christmas presents and drinking one of the bottles of Sauvignon Blanc that we'd bought.

Then for the second night in a row we watched a couple of episodes of Downton Abbey which was intended to get us in to the Christmas spirit but it turns out that tragedy befell the Crawley family and so for an hour and a half Abby and I were crying our eyes out.....

This morning we are travelling to La Puesta which is the name of the estancia that we're staying at for the next four days. There's no wifi there but there's horses and of course those hills!

I hope you have a wonderful Christmas wherever you are, whatever you are doing with whoever you're doing it with.

With lots of love,

Raine x