.jpg)
Today we went to Juanico Familia Deicas Vineyards in Montevideo, Uruguay. This is our first (and only) wine tasting off of the ship. We had signed up for another one (in Chile) that we missed due to the “Machu Picchu Adventure” (as it is now referred to…). We have heard and tasted good things about South American wines – but we don’t have a lot of experience so we thought this excursion would be interesting.
The tour departed around 10:15 this morning and we did a quick overview of the city of Montevideo before heading out to the vineyard. The countryside is beautiful, although today we had a bit of rain, but all in all it was an easy ride out to Juanico. Because of the rain we stayed on the coach and they drove us through the vineyards showing off their beautiful grapes – some of which were being harvested as we watched!
The wine cellar would be competition to Napa! Mike and Cheryl toast to a good time!
We were then taken into the main building, given a glass of their sparkling wine, and shown through their wine cellar. Through our explorations of the area I ran into a group of Sommeliers and wine stewards and stewardesses from the Mariner! They had come for a wine tasting (and some wine purchasing) as well and were having a great time watching the locals cook up some beef on the BBQ. We had heard that the Uruguayan beef is some of the best organic beef in the world…so we were hoping to get a taste of it as well! Inside we sat at some very rustic tables – the table tops were actual slices of trees! Very interesting.
We tasted 5 wines and all of them were pretty good – some better than others of course. The wines consisted of:
– Sparkling Wine
– Chardonnay/Viognier
– Tannat
– Merlot
– Meritage
They did serve us some food…but none of the beef that we saw cooking outside on the BBQ…we were very disappointed…but, they did make up for it by giving us a special show.
The ship’s head sommelier on the Mariner says hello! This guy has been manning the Uruguayan BBQ for many years.
Two couples came out and did the Tango for us! It was sort of weird because at first the 2 men were dancing together – we found out that it was traditionally men who did the Tango…at houses of ill repute, while they waited their turn…so to speak. After a while the rules loosened up or guys just started thinking it was sort of strange to have to dance suggestive dances with another guy, and now the Tango is done with a man and a female partner (a much better combination in my opinion!). The dancing was very nice albeit, how we say in America, “sexy” even involving throwing the woman over his head, lots of contact below the belt and so on. Apparently, when the guys were dancing together in the “old” days, they thought it was taboo to have contact on the upper body, including making eye contact, but OK to touch below the belt. Go figure. After the professional couples danced they came out into the group and brought some of our fellow Regent travelers out onto the dance floor to do regular ballroom type dancing. Neither Margaret or I went, but some of our friends did and it looked like they had a good time!
The professionals show us their stuff. Marcia and Jean-Michel enjoy Janico wine.
After this finished we were back on the bus and were brought back to the downtown area where the bus dropped us off for some shopping. We walked around the shopping area a bit but Margaret had a conference call so we had to go back to the ship. I did get a chance to sample (finally!) some Uruguayan beef when I saw some of our friends, Mary and Pete, at one of the restaurants and was able to get a bite of some of the food they were eating – it was very good! Tomorrow we are off early to fly to the Iguaza Falls…this will be quite an experience I am certain…we are hoping it will be less of an adventure than the one we got at Machu Picchu – but we will pack extra underwear just in case ☺.
Pictures coming when we get back from the Falls. I got them all edited just now but have to get to bed. I took the D200 today and it was dark at the beginning of the day. I accidentally left the camera on ISO 800 all day so I wasn’t terribly happy with the picture quality. However, I still got WAY too many pictures that I liked (about 100) so it took a while to process them all. That’s part of the learning process. I’ve done that twice now and hopefully, won’t do it again. Tomorrow’s going to be one full day! Stay tuned.
PS: We are going to be going to Tonga with the kids on a bareboat catamaran charter mid-April. There was a cyclone there yesterday with, get this, 140 mph winds. No one was killed which is good news. Don’t know if there was damage to the “cats” at Sunsail but we’ll be finding out shortly. We don’t need that kind of excitement after Machu Picchu. (PS: I have now decided to NOT go to Tonga due to a number of reasons. Instead, the much safer choice of British Virgin Islands).
Montevideo Picture Gallery 1: http://travelwithdm.smugmug.com/Travel/South-America/Montevideo-Feb-16-2010/25172516_jstgbL#!i=2064490536&k=WP3d84v