Woozy in Wine Country

We finally got around to taking one of the many day trips from Salta. Located just shy of 200 km from the city, Cafayate is a lazy, pleasant village known throughout Argentina for its stellar wines. A number of bodegas grow their grapes in the area's high-altitude vineyards--well irrigated and perpetually sunny, the region is apparently quite hospitable to malbec, cabarnet, and torrontes varieties.

In the last three-and-a-half months alone, we've logged literally thousands of miles by bus, train, 4x4, and van. Sick of riding, we decided to try something altogether different and drive. Emily piloted us past the Salta city limits (I stupidly left my license in Buenos Aires, and decided to ride shotgun so as not to become the second member of my immediate family to see the inside of a Latin American prison). We flew through the multicolored Quebrada de la Concha (I'm pretty sure that this translates into something completely indecent) and landed in Cafayate around two. After a stop at a tourist kiosk for a map of the bodegas, we headed off in search of what we figured would be the first of many free drinking spots.

Bodega Etchart churns out one of our all-time favorite budget malbecs. When we arrived, the bottling area was a blur of noise and movement, as bottles rolled down the conveyor to get corked. A woman motioned us into a dimly lit tasting room, poured us eight glasses of wine, and left. "For you!" she said, pushing four in each of our directions. By the time she returned minutes later, we were buzzing. We said we'd buy a couple of $3 bottles, which pleased her enough that she decided to pour us one more glass of their premium blend for good measure.

As we stumbled away from Etchart, blinking woozily in the sun, we quickly realized that we were going to need to scale back the rest of the afternoon. We visited a no-frills table swill bodega and admired the pyramid of cheap jugs in their showroom before politely declining a tasting. After a glass of torrontes and malbec at Vaseja Secreta, plus a bowl of cabernet sauvignon ice cream at a local heladeria, we were ready to call it a day.

We returned the car without incident late that evening, the odometer reading about 10 km short of our purchased allotment. Between Cafayate and our bodega tour of Mendoza, we've made out pretty well on our binging excursions. -NSH