From France to Argentina: Montesquieu Winery Reports on our Adventures in Bordeaux and Mendoza

I’ve finally come up for air.

As you may recall, roughly two weeks ago I jetted off to France and Argentina with high hopes of blogging my way through the wines of Primeurs 2010 and the vines of Mendoza.  I made bold promises to provide regular updates.  I expressed a brash commitment to real-time coverage.

What was I thinking?

I must have been suffering from temporary amnesia, forgetting how busy we were on last year’s trip.  I must have overestimated my ability to multi-task and to function effectively at the hazy hour of 3am. I must have assumed we wouldn’t pack seven or eight activities back-to-back-to-back in a single day.

Well never again.  After eleven straight days crammed with tastings, vineyard visits, harvest, winery work, meetings, conversations with producers, dinners, fiestas, red-eye transatlantic flights, and rarely sleeping more than four hours in a night, I’ve learned my lesson:  Work first, report later.

The trip’s not yet over, though.  I’m in the city of Mendoza right now.  We had our last appointment today, and for the first time in a fortnight, I’m finding myself with no commitments (until we meet for dinner in a couple of hours).  So while my Montesquieu Winery colleagues take a few moments to see sights and visit shops, I am sitting on the Peatonal Sarmiento – the pedestrian walkway that leads to the Plaza Independencia in the heart of downtown Mendoza – finally making good on my foolhardy promises.

It’s an unseasonably warm, breezy autumn day.  Everyone is out enjoying the weather, lounging by the fountain or sipping espresso in one of the walkway’s many outdoor cafés .  The leaves in the trees that line the broad pedestrian boulevard are swaying gently, partly obscuring the Andes Mountains that tower in the distance.  I’m sitting with a local brew, laptop open.  It’s time to write.

Although our adventures began in France, we’ll begin our coverage in Argentina – after all, it seems strange to write about Bordeaux barrel samples with the crisp juice of freshly-crushed Malbec grapes lingering on the tongue.   We already posted a general overview of the Mendoza region.  And over the next couple of weeks we’ll fill you in on our Argentine wine trails followed by our impressions of the 2010 Bordeaux vintage and a juicy story or two from our time in St. Emilion.

Meanwhile, enjoy the following photos – a brief sampling of what we’ve been up to!

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