jnjfraz

Each year my DH and I go to Italy for 4-6 weeks. We prefer to rent an apartment and stay in one place and enjoy. (Our big decision is were to go to lunch and what wineries to tour) We will be in Tuscany for 4 weeks this fall.

Last March we rented a cottage in Sonoma Ca for a month and loved it, so we want to go somewhere for 4-5 weeks every spring. Toured 39 wineries and the food was wonderful.

Argentina has come to the top of the list for spring of 2009. We are in the wine business so the wine country is a must. We have also heard wonderful things about Buenos Aires.

Can anyone help with town/rental in wine country? The same for BA.... isn't there a cool Italian neighboorhood in BA?

I really appreciate your help.

J
www.vinorossoidaho.com

skatedancer

You also should consider adding the Northwest region to your itinerary and visit Bodega Colome. It is Argentina's oldest working vineyard, and a wonderful place to visit! Very remote, though, so you should plan on staying there for at least two nights. It is now owned by the Hess Group. After our trip, Wine Spectator gave Colome some accolades, so we had to fight off some of NYC's top restaurants to get a case of one of the wines we had sampled there! If you like to ride horses, you will have a wonderful opportunity to get into the countryside on some magnificent horses as well.

The NW is a great place in and of itself, with scenery, culture and wines. There are many other wineries in the region.

jnjfraz

Skatedancer,

Sound interesting. I tried pulling the the town and did not get much.

How did you get to Moinos? Can you drive from Molinos to Mendoza? Google map almost looks like there is no road into Molinos.

Thanks for the help.

skatedancer

well, I"m not surprised you don't see a road, because the only way to get there is on narrow, dusty, winding dirt roads! We had a private guide four a five day tour through the region. We spent two nights at Colome, only one full day there, and wish we could have had a few more!!

You can try to drive yourself, of course, but I recommend hiring a driver. It is not easy to find, the roads are difficult, and the scenery is too wonderful to miss while trying to navigate! The route from Salta to Colome via Cachi is really, really wonderful. The drive south from Colome to Cafayate is more monotonous, but doing the whole loop is worth it, I think.

the website is estanciacolome.com, which brings you to the winery (bodega) and then click on the bottom right to see the estancia (hotel) info.

I don't know how to give you the link to my trip report, but if you put "Colome" in the search box above, a few posts down you will see my report, entitled, "The Amazing NW of Argentina."

If you try to get a guide, I highly recommend our driver, and also Angie Valdez, who posts here under the name Giena or Flinstones (one is her Fodors name and one is her TA name, can't remember which is which). You will find many raves on both forums from folks who have used her.

If you plan to stay for more than two nights at Colome, I guess you'd have to figure out what to do about the guide, because you are paying them to do nothing if they just stay in Molinos and wait for you. Perhaps you get someone to bring you and then come back for you. Not sure best way to do this. Colome may offer advice in that regard.

Some people do drive themselves. Guess it depends on how adventurous you are. All I can say is, that not one of us in our car (we were two couples) would have been happy to be driving this route!

There are also many wineries to visit in Cafayate. I think these are sort of mom-and-pop operations. Not sure. We didn't end up visiting any of them, due to lack of time, and having realized that we had already had the best wine in the region!

If you do go to Colome, ask for a room overlooking the pool. you won't look directly at the pool, but this is the more scenic vista.

Be sure to visit other parts of the NW if you go to Colome. You can't really visit the other parts of the area using Colome as a base. You could base yourself in Cafayate, I guess, but I don't know that the quality of all these wineries would be as high as those you would find in Mendoza.(i am not an expert on this, though, but that would be my guess.) You should also see the city of Salta, the villages of Purmamarca and TIlcara, and also the Salt Flats (although we did not see the SF while we were there, but sounds great from what i 've read). Perhaps you want to take a week to 10 days to tour the NW, a few weeks in Mendoza, and a week in BsAs.

avrooster

Top independent NW Argentina guide Angie Valdez posts here as "Flintstones" and as "Giena" on TA.

Using the search feature, you will find many favorable comments about her services, as skatedancer says.

flintstones

Thank you so much SKATEDANCER and AVRooster for the referral. Driving from Molinos to Mendoza is a crazy idea. But I can not add anything else to what skatedancer said...The wines are great, the food, the weather, the scenery, and nothing else could I say but Come and See, taste and enjoy...
Flintstones ( Giena in TA)