Mendoza offers all the quality wines, scenic vistas and epicurean escapism as its sister wine-growing regions — Bordeaux and Napa — but good luck getting an up-close, intimate experience while in either of those two places. As Laura learns while exploring the region in this BT piece, ” . . . it’s a more intimate experience here . . . [m]ost often, the guy who opens the door will be the vintner himself.”

She begins in Luján de Cuyo in western Mendoza, the birthplace of grape growing in Argentina and considered to be home of some of the world’s best Melbec. Next, Laura (I feel like we’re friends already) heads into Valle de Uco to taste the valley’s specialty: Tempranillio (a grape with “elements of berryish fruit, herbaceousness, and an earthy-leathery minerality” (I can’t tell you how many times I’ve used this same description to describe the Tempranillio myself while at cocktail parties).

She finishes up in Chacras de Coria to learn about the fair-trade winery movement — a movement intended to, as one grower says, “make sure the children of these farmers have a future on this land.” Assumedly in an effort to help preserve the region’s culture and maintain the uniqueness that makes Mendoza, well, not Bordeaux or Napa.