Argentinian Asado

Yes, this post is about meat.  But before we get to that...

First, here's us splurging on a nice coffee (very difficult to find without breaking the bank) and a pastry in the upscale part of town.

And here's where we dropped in a bit later (seeing the huge group of locals in attendance) and had a litre of beer and two very tasty pizza slices for less money than the coffees above.  Coors would be proud - the beer was super-cooled to the point where the top two inches was slush.

How to chill out at the hostel?  I preferred borrowing the house guitar.  Too bad I don't know any Argentinian folk/tango songs.  Ballads by Extreme and Alice In Chains only.

OK, on to the meat.  Our hostel provided some kind of cheap-to-free activity every night.  First night we did wine tasting, and second night I took a Yerba Mate-making class (it's the preferred drink of South America - like communal tea; I even bought a mate (the cup you make the drink in) and bombilla (the straw you drink it through).  And the last night of our stay I attended their bi-weekly Asado.

Argentinian "Asado" is their version of grilling/BBQ.  Asado grills/ovens are attached to almost every home.  It's a wood-fired slow-grilling technique.  Some grill surfaces may be winched up or down to achieve the optimal cooking height.  The meat is big slabs (not sure of the cut), with a very thin layer of sheathing/fat on top, which is well-salted but not otherwise seasoned.  The meat is cooked to about medium-well or well done, which takes around 1-2 hours, during which the surface develops wonderful caramelization while the meat stays surprisingly moist.

Our Asado master checks the grill heat.  We probably had the only grillmaster in Argentina who looks almost exactly like Kim Thayil, guitarist for Soundgarden.  (And Soundgarden's "Spoonman" is playing on the stereo at the hostel while I write this.  Clearly it was meant to be.)

The hostel's Asado area, fairly typical - always a tall chimney

Mmm, the meat is winched down and starts cooking

Wood is stacked criss-cross off to one side until it becomes coals and can be added in a thin layer to the main cooking area

Things are starting to cook

Meat is flipped, and the quicker-cooking chorizo is added 

The hostel attendees (note Sarah is not there, having eaten earlier)

Then we settled down to tasty empanadas, salad, grilled potatoes and peppers, and an evening of succulent all-you-can-eat Asado and all-you-can-drink Argentine wine.  A bit taxing at my age, but I hung in there.

Mmm, asado, yum

Mendoza Meander

Aside from wine, Mendoza has a lot of outdoor activities to offer - rafting, horseback riding, and the like.  However, they are all expensive and all a ways out of town.  Long on upcoming Patagonian opportunities for adventure and short on cash, we spent much of our time hanging out in the city and checking out what it has to offer.  And what it has to offer is a really lovely town with lots of activity, tree-lined streets, tasty food, and friendly people.  A few shots of our time here...

Chad in front of one of the many nice fountains along one of the many shopping streets.  This was our first night, before we found out our bank cards weren't going to work and spent the rest of the evening checking different ATMs and on the phone with RBC.  Crisis averted; our cards mysteriously started working again the next day.

In the other Central Park.  On Saturday this place buzzed with activity as friends and families strolled, picnicked, fed ducks, and the like.

Mendoza has five central plazas, set out on the city map like the number five on dice.  We made it our mission to see all five.  This is not as impressive as it sounds - you can walk to all of them within about 15 minutes.

Plaza San Martin, lovely and known as the 'banking square', since it's lined by about ten banks.

Plaza Espana.  Claimed to be the most beautiful for its tile work.  Built as a tribute to Argentina's relationship with Spain.

Fountains throughout the city were spewing pink water.  We assume this was on purpose, but why is anyone's guess.  To celebrate the local vino culture, perhaps?

Just another outdoor patio... 

Plaza Italia.  Nothing particularly Italian about it, but it was nice enough.

On a particularly hot afternoon we checked out the huge park to the west of the city.  It was filled with paths and people running and making us feel lazy.  (Near the university - a fertile source of runners.)

Gateway to the park, topped by a condor, just like Chile.  Both Chile and Argentina use condors as common, official symbols.  Weirdly, the Andean Condor is the national bird of Chile, Bolivia, Colombia and Equador, but not Argentina.  

Mendoza is in the middle of a desert, but somehow manages to be lush and green.  Its irrigation ditches, like the one pictured below, are the cause of this anomaly.  Many are dry, and I wouldn't be drinking what's in the other ones if you paid me, but they seem to do the trick.

We also wandered through what seemed to be one of the more rich neighbourhoods near the park/university, featuring nice houses like this one (we particularly liked the doors):

Plaza Independencia by day.  This is the biggest, and the one in the middle, usually filled with people hanging out or just passing through.

And finally, Plaza Chile.  Doesn't even merit a fountain!

Although not as bad as Santiago, Mendoza is also filled with dogs.  The town solves the dogs-feeding-on-the-garbage problem by using these elevated storage bins and then collecting the garbage regularly.

And finally, a few shots I took while out for a wander.  I was trying to capture the number and variety of old vehicles around Mendoza.  They must have some good mechanics down here!

Beer Nerd Post re: Judging

Over at the Hoplog Blog, some photos of the late September 2012 BC Beer Awards judging, and some thoughts on judging to style guidelines and judging commercial beer:

http://hoplogblog.blogspot.ca/2012/10/2012-bc-beer-awards-judging-and-judging.html

Enjoy!
Chad.

Mendoza, Mountains, and Malbecs

We've spent the last few days in Mendoza, which really is a lovely little town.  Its claim to fame is that the province of Mendoza, and in particular the area around the town, is a major wine producing region.  In fact, it contains the largest winery in Argentina, but more on that in a minute.  We've got some pictures to show you how nice Mendoza is, but we thought we'd start with what's most important - the day we spent bike touring wineries!

Maipu is a little town about 15 kilometres out of Mendoza and a major spot on the backpacking trail as you can rent bikes for cheap and then tour around about 10 wineries, plus an olive oil factory, chocolate store, beer garden (which we skipped, believe it or not), and more.

We went to the bike place recommended by our (super awesome) hostel and for some reason we got a deal - about $8 a day each to rent a bike.

It even comes with a basket for wine!

This is not Copenhagen - there are not well marked bike lanes everywhere.  Rather, you ride along the side of a bumpy, potholed road with transport trucks, motorcycles, and street racers zooming by.  Still, it's almost completely flat and the scenery is difficult to beat, so I'm not complaining!

The nets over the wines are for hailstorms, and if you look closely in the middle of the photo you can see an odd green bird.  Not sure what it was, but it had a very different call.

How could things be bad with a view of the Andes in the background?  [Note from Chad: far right of the photo is the highest mountain outside of the Himalayas, Aconcagua]

Our first stop was a small, long running family owned winery called Di Tommaso.

Although they will tell you it's the oldest (everyone is looking for a claim to fame, I suppose), this is apparently the second oldest winery in the area.  They have been declared a historic site for the old tanks in their original building, which are no longer used and now form a bit of a museum that you tour through.

Old wine making gear now stored in one of the old tanks.  The ceiling of the tank is coated in crystals [malic acid] that formed there over many years as a result of the fermenting grapes.  The tanks have two chambers - top for fermenting, bottom for conditioning.

Old tanks and barrels.

Stop number two (before lunch, bravely, given my recent no food/too much beer bruising incident) was Tempus Alba, a medium-small winery but very modern, with a lovely new showcase tasting room/bodega building.

While the food looked good, they were out of about 1/2 their menu, and some investigation revealed they were heating everything up in the microwave.  So we went to a recommended restaurant down the road instead.  A very wise decision - everything there was 100% homemade and incredibly tasty!

Homemade empanadas with "Grandma white meat" (?), onions, spices, egg and olive.  Those were Chad's - I had the Italian-style Caprese - mozzarella, tomato, and oregano.  So yummy!

Our third stop was at the largest winery in Argentina - Trapiche.  Their lower-end wine (still very tasty) is produced next door in an enormous facility - their largest wine tank is 5 million litres; enough to fill a train with wine; they've hosted dinners inside the tank.  But of course they have smaller-production high-end wines as well.

A few years ago, Trapiche took over the abandoned but historic winery next door, completely restored it and turned it into their high-end wine production building and visitor tour centre.  When the original Italian-style winery was constructed in about 1912, it was state of the art - had its own rail siding, was steam powered, and very large.  In order to make high-quality tanks, they imported bricks from England and mortar from Germany.  During the restoration, the original tanks were coated with epoxy, etc. to bring them up to modern standards.

The restored, showcase Trapiche winery

Row of original fermentation tanks.  There is another floor of identical tanks below this.

Restored barrel floor - it's all end-cut wood (epoxied now to preserve it), originally mounted in sand, so that barrels of wine could be rolled "gently" over it and into waiting trains.  This was the only winery in the area smart enough to build their own siding so that the trains could roll right in and make things easy for them.

Sweet tasting room

Barrels stored below the tasting room floor.

The winery's olive tree grove, with an old train car on the left.

Loving wine touring!  Taken by a British couple who are thinking of moving to Vancouver.  We talked up the city and gave them our emails so we can show them the best places to drink... well, beer of course, if they end up moving to town.

Trapiche winery is big.  They have a fancy tour and tasting room.  We wanted to hate them.  But we just couldn't - they are well run, up front about who they are and where they came from (rather than showing off or making exaggerated claims), and we had an amazing guide (former musician/now a sommelier) who knew his stuff and spent almost two hours chatting with us since it wasn't a busy day and we were on the last tour.  The key takeaway: Mendoza is an ideal environment for growing grapes.  It's in a desert (officially - they get just 200 mm of rain per year) and they irrigate the vines.  This means that their grapes are very consistent from year to year and they very rarely have a bad year; the last was 1998 when El Nino wreaked a bit of havoc (though not enough that they couldn't produce any wine at all).  Clearly the Argentinians have this figured out, as Mendoza has 900+ wineries!

All in all, an awesome day!