🇦🇷 Day 3 in the Uco Valley: Dust Devils, Interesting Grapes, and a Three Legged Dog 🐶

Could anything actually top yesterday’s tour of the Uco Valley and those hidden gems? We weren’t sure, but we were more than willing to find out! Today’s wine mission: heading deep into the heart of the Uco Valley to explore some wineries that had been on our must-visit list for a while.

And this was a mission we were happy to take on along with our guide for the next two days, Dom. We begrudgingly checked out of Susana Balbo Winemaker’s House and off we went. We would head south a bit to our first winery of the day, Caelum. 

Caelum Wines: A Constellation of Beautiful Wines

We arrived at Caelum with the sun shining, and the Andes once again towering above us in the distance. Even Tupungato, the volcano, was gracing us with its beauty as we started our day here. 🏔️

Caelum is a small family owned winery which only produces about 100,000 bottles per year. The family are stargazers, so they named the winery after the constellation Caelum, and there were nods to the stars throughout the visit. I just love the family stories that are behind family owned wineries – it’s one of the reasons we always gravitate to wineries like Caelum.

We were greeted on the front step of the tasting room by our host, who was so gracious! We immediately started on our tour (we MAY have been a few minutes late!), and as we entered the winery, saw that we were lucky enough to be there on the day a bottling team had come to do some bottling.

The bottling team is a third party who brings the bottling machine with them, and it was fascinating to watch them! Did you know that most wineries don’t label their wines until they’re ready to ship because the labels may be different based on where they’re being sold? Fascinating.

Caelum also makes sparkling wine in the Champagne method, and so it was very interesting to learn about how they manage all of this at the winery. The traditional method of making sparkling wine is very labor intensive, and because Caelum is such a small operation, it really seems like a labor of love.

In addition to the wine, we also learned about how Caelum started as a pistachio farm back in 1994, but ultimately has evolved to grow Malbec, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Pinot Noir, Montepulciano, Petit Syrah, Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, and Muscat. They also grow Fiano, which is a white grape grown mainly in Italy.

It’s been really interesting for us to uncover wineries growing grapes that typically are grown elsewhere, and many of them are new to us – like Fiano. My partner in wine and I both really liked the Fiano. Again, another wine perfect for sunset at the Service Club Beach in Venice! 🏖️

And so, let’s talk about the tasting! We tasted:

• 2020 Fiano
• 2016 Malbec
• 2021 Icono
• 2016 Cabernet Sauvignon

They were all amazing, but my favorite of the list was the Fiano. It was creamy, yet crisp with a slightly smoky aroma. It is as interesting to drink as it is to think about that description! Even my partner in wine gave it very high marks! He’s not usually drawn to whites, so this was quite the compliment!

I also loved the Icono, which was a blend of Montepulciano and Cab Franc. It was spicy, with black pepper, and warm with notes of vanilla. Perfect for cool nights like we heard everyone was having in Venice while we were gone!

And beyond the wine itself, the Icono label is a gorgeous visual allegory of the family’s history at the winery (and includes the Caelum constellation front and center!). It’s really beautiful, and one of the things I love most about wine labels – some tell the most beautiful visual stories and the Icono definitely does!

To top off a really enjoyable tasting, we also got to see Caelum’s wineamker, Juan Ubaldini, doing a tasting from the barrels. He has been the winemaker since 2020, and while we didn’t get to talk with him, it was really interesting to see how he did this.

We wrapped up our visit by adding a few more bottles to our growing cellar, and a couple of bags of their pistachios, and then Dom whisked us on to our next winery, Finca Decero.

Finca Decero: Birds, Dust Devils, and Grapes

From Caelum, we headed to Finca Decero which was a much larger winery than Caelum, and larger than most of the ones we visited on this trip. The setting, however, was gorgeous. Lush green lawns extending out to the vineyards…and the Andes further beyond. I love my gulf coast beaches, but these views were the perfect opposite. Can’t I just have both??? Venice Beach on one side, and this on the other? Is that too much to ask?

Decero is a Swiss-owned winery, purchased in 2000, and comprising 220 hectares. The first harvest was made in 2004, and it now produces 400,000 liters of wine each year. In contast to Caelum’s 100,000 bottles, this is more than 500,000 bottles.

As with most of the wineries in this region, the water used for irrigation comes from snow melt in the Andes. This is quite the battle, as we learned on this trip, since water rights are very hard to secure. In some areas of Mendoza, the limits on water will prevent new wineries from being started, since the area is so dry and irrigation is a requirement. Due to the limitations of water, most wineries use drip irrigation, whereas we saw several wineries in Chile which used flooding techniques.

Decero is a sustainable winery, so they are very focused on caring for the land – using cover crops, and nurturing the animals that live on the land. They claim to have more than 40 bird species living on the vineyard and working to reduce the number of pests attacking the vines. We saw so many birds while visiting…they must be doing something right!

I learn something new on every wine tour, but these have really opened my eyes to all the additional considerations that go into wine making. Water rights? Birds? Who knew?

Leo was our guide at Decero, and he met us as we approached the winery. The building was enormous, and quite modern. As we toured, we were joined by another couple from the UK, making this the third (and final) tour that we shared with others. 

Our guide, Dom, who has lived in Mendoza and worked in the wine industry for years, knew the winemaker, Tomás Hughes, and ran into him in the winery. They chatted while we continued the tour, but we had the chance to meet Tomás. I always feel a bit like a fan-girl when meeting a winemaker. I’m in awe of what they do, and of how humble they always appear to be. 

After the tour, we went to the tasting room which was huge and beautiful to begin our tasting. Our tasting included more wines than any other tasting that we’ve had, with 10 wines on the menu. Luckily, this was our last scheduled tasting of the day!

So as we sat for the tasting, we faced an enormous picture window with a view of the vineyards and the Andes – including Cerro el Plata (which we also had a great view of from Piedras Negras, and a setting full of glasses ready to introduce us to the wines of Decero.

The Owl and the Dust Devil is a pretty special wine and even has its own website. The wine celebrates the dust devils that naturally swirl through the vineyards and the owls that perch as watchful guardians over the land. These two forces of nature work together to protect the grapes, with the wind cooling the fruit and the owls maintaining the ecosystem’s balance. 

The label is a gorgeous depiction of the story, and serves as a tribute to the story, even featuring a QR code that will launch a custom app to show the story and a pretty cool augmented reality show of the story. This is the first time we’ve seen anything like this, and while clearly a marketing gimmick, it is interesting. You can access the app, if you’re interested, from the site.

This was a lot of wine to taste! We always appreciate good wine, but found the more obscure varietals of the Cab Franc, the Petit Verdot, the Tannat, and the Amano to be our favorites. If you haven’t already caught on, this wine lover favors Cab Franc, and my partner in wine will ALWAYS choose a 100% Petit Verdot, so this was a great tasting for both of us. 

Luckily for Dom, we truly just tasted most of these wines, so we were still able to maneuver ourselves out of the tasting room! From Decero, we were off to lunch, and then to our next hotel. 

A Leisurely Lunch at Rincón Atamisque

Dom had coordinated a tasting lunch for us at Rincón Atamisque, and we opted to sit out under the trees. Our meal was delicious and included a variety of Atamisque wines, beginning with the Atamisque Extreme Brut. They easily accommodated our food preferences, and we enjoyed a Malbec and a Cabernet Franc. Relaxing amongst the trees and getting to know our guide, Dom, a bit better was a highlight of the Mendoza trip. Without another tasting scheduled that afternoon, we were able to leisurely enjoy the afternoon (and we didn’t even take copious notes on our meal and pairing…thus the lack of specifics around what we ate and drank!) 

Fully satiated, we finally jumped back into the car to head out to what we believed to be the last hotel of our trip – the Auberge du Vin in Tupungato.

A Hotel in the Vineyard: Auberge du Vin

So, arriving at the Auberge du Vin was a bit of a surprise, as it was situated in the middle of an under-developed area called the Tupungato Winelands. The road to get there was long, dirt, and rough. I had read about this in hotel reviews, but I didn’t quite understand exactly how long and rough it was. 

When I chose this hotel, I was excited by the opportunity to stay in a hotel set amidst acres of vines, but this was truly isolated. And let’s be honest – I was also excited because this is a Marriott property, and I do love an opportunity to use (or earn) points. 🤷🏻‍♀️

As we arrived, we were met by the two sweetest perros, including one who was missing one of his legs, but was easily keeping up with his larger, four-legged friend. We were both happy to have such a happy greeting by such sweet greeters. We learned that the three legged greeter was named Patatas (Paws), and was the resident dog who appeared well cared for and happy to come and go from the hotel as he pleased. His black lab friend apparently belonged to a farmer nearby who didn’t pay much attention to him, so he spent his days being loved up by the hotel and its guests. I’m a sucker for dogs….

The hotel was very nice, but very quiet, prompting me to ask if we were the only guests in the hotel. Of course we weren’t! There was one other room occupied…

After getting settled in our large room overlooking a block of vines, we spent the evening walking all over the Tupungato Winelands which had two abandoned polo fields, and claimed to also include a golf course (which we later learned was also essentially abandoned). The walk was beautiful and we were accompanied by our perro friends, so it was a great way to wrap up the day. 

We had one more day of tastings lined up, and we anticipated it being the best one so far, so we turned in early while looking both forward to the day, and dreading the fact that it would be our last one before heading back to our beloved Venice. 🏝️

Pour yourself una copa 🍷 and stay tuned for our final day’s adventures. You won’t want to miss what we both believe was our favorite day of the whole trip! (Hint: You can subscribe and you’ll get an email when we post! Not spam, just a notification when we post our next story!)