Country Article / Postcards

Argentina's Wine Country--Psychedelic and Surreal

Date: 12/05/2004

Mendoza, at the foot of the Andes Cordillera, is the capital of Argentina's wine province. It is a tranquil city with old colonial charm. The streets are bordered by irrigation canals and lined with tall sycamore trees that provide shade from the ever-present sunshine. Like all Latin cities, Mendoza has piazzas; if you were looking from above, they would resemble a five on a dice. The central piazza is a large park with many trees and an underground theater. Around the city lie numerous bodegas or wineries that you can visit and that offer wine tasting.

This whole region would be a desert if not for the glaciers that provide the ample water used since ancient times to irrigate the sunny plains. With a clever irrigation system this region has become fertile and now produces over 80% of Argentina's wine.

Beyond the great snow-covered mountains lies Chile. The other day I drove for six hours all the way to the border; the beauty of the landscape is impossible to describe, but I'll try. The region has polychromous mountains, that is, mountains with stripes of colors: red, yellow, orange, pink, brown, and black. I felt like I was driving on a different planet. There are rivers here of a bizarre blood-red color wandering through canyons of pink granite…suddenly giving way to yellow mountains, or black ones, or high peaks of red stone. With the deep blue sky lingering above and the strong sun playing with shapes and shades, the landscape is utterly surrealistic, even psychedelic.

William J. Palladino
For International Living