We spent the morning being driven from bodaga to bodega by Aldo in his 30 year old Ford Falcon (I´d post a picture but Blogger seems to object... maybe it´ll sort itself out). Aldo works at Hostel Zonda (the 10pm to 5am shift) and also provides the bodega tour. His car is like the one in the picture, but so old most of the panels are matt.

We started in the smallest bodega (wine cellar), where a softly spoken sanjuanino (chap from San Juan) took us through the process before we tasted their Tempranillo and Cabernet (very nice).

That set the scene for the morning, another bodega, another finca (vinyard), another set of wines to taste. In the second there was a Chardonnay, a Rose, a Syrrah, a Malbec and a Dessert wine. And the chap poured almost full measures.

Aldo wasn´t drinking, fortunately.

The last two were bigger and had videos to watch, the last was the biggest in the province and was responsible for the first radio station in the area, it had its own train station. That was the place where we saw photos of the earthquake they had here in 1944, the buildings were all adobe brick and the town of San Juan was utterly devastated. It´s now a modern, if a little soul-less city.

After about a dozen tastings we persuaded Aldo to join us for lunch in a cantina style pizzeria, they do an especial, which is basically a muzzarella with a thick slice of ham on top (and an olive).

Everything is in Spanish which is good, because we´re both understanding it pretty well. The only thing here is the pronunciation. In contrast to BA lluvia (shoobia in BA) is yubia here and Ferrocarril (ferrrrrocarrrrril in BA: roll those rrrrrs) is feshocashil.

Yep, we´re somewhere where rr is pronounced sh.
  ¶ 9:57 PM