malbec madness

mendoza, argentina.

home of the best malbec grapes that ever dared to drip from an overgrown vine bursting with juicy life, basking in the sun...with the andes painting the skyline ever so gracefully and clouds fluffing their way across them like little bunny rabbits hopping home... it´s warm, breezy... the canopy of trees swish in the wind as you...

ESCAPE DEATH teetering precariously on the side of the crowdedlikethis road on a crickety rental bicycle, choking on the exhaust that the enormous 10-wheeler just extinguished all over you and your pretty wine-tasting sundress that is drenched cause you´ve been working your ass off for the past hour in the unrelenting burning afternoon sun... when did wine-tasting become a life threatening game of chicken with oncoming traffic??!

i am in wine country. and yes, it´s absolutely GORgeous, but let´s just say the constant fear of getting run over or off the bloody road overshadowed the test of ´what do you smell in this varietal... oak? grapes? caramel?...´

"ummm,why does mine smell like weird seafood?"

after 4 incredible days in mendoza, i´m sad to report that i am no better at picking out the ´woody cedar berries with a smidgen of marshmallow´ or the ´buttery pear with a crinkle of vanilla´ in my wine glass. nope, apparantly, my nose doesn´t cut it. (and just a side note... why do they always use these obscure descriptions to 'identify' the damn wine? really? do you really smell the pinch of primrose pepper and drip of darjeeling in there?!? really?) in fact, i failed miserably. and i tried. oh, did i give it the home run try! but to no avail... i did, however, do an outstanding job of getting a wee bit tipsy and jumping off a cliff to perilously paraglide over the entire varietal valley while keeping the malbec safe and swishing in my belly... impressive, no?

i did walk away with this fact... did you know that the reason that the malbec grape grows so well here is because they can control the amount of water the grapes receive during the season?

and yeah, that's about as much info as i retained.