Since many others have written reviews of their trips to Mendoza I wanted to do the same. Katie (my wife) and I learned a lot in advance of our trip from what everyone has contributed and I hope someone reading this will learn something from us in return.

Overall, we had an excellent trip and the middle of May is a wonderful time to go. The weather was in the mid 70s and sunny every day except the day we arrived and the day we left. The wineries were done with harvest and were almost mostly finished with getting this year's wine into barrels so the tours were very laid back and small in size. We planned our trip to do 4 days of winery tours/tastings, 1 day of horseback riding, 1 day to drive to Puenta del Inca and Aconcagua, and 2 days of milling around in Mendoza City.

We stayed 5 nights at the Posada Olivar in Chacras de Coria and 3 nights at the Argentino in Mendoza City. Posada Olivar is basically a B&B with clean, comfortable rooms and Jose Luis is an excellent host. We paid $95/night to stay there and were only about 1 mile from the center of town. If you're looking for a clean and simple place to stay without all the frills it was a wonderful place. The Argentino was also a very pleasant stay with many helpful people.

We visited and/or tasted at 14 wineries and had too many excellent wines to name. I took the time to look through the Mendoza and Wine Threads to create a short list of recommendations from Alex and other FTers before coming up with our final list (I may publish more on the wines in the wine thread). Given that we live in Minnesota, our challenge will be to find many of the wines that do get exported here in our local wine stores (a challenge I look forward to tackling.)

Other than Terrazas and Bodega Lopez, I believe all the wineries we visited would be classified as "small" or "boutique". The one thing that really stuck out from all the small wineries was the subtle differences in their winemaking processes and truly how many variables go into making a wine. By the end of the second day I was beginning to see how those variables came through in the final bottled wine.

My favorite producers were Tempus Alba, VistaAlba, Benegas, Carinae, and El Lagar. The only wines that I tried but really didn't enjoy were from Bodegas Lopez and that was because what I tried was too earthy for my liking. IMO, you still have to visit Lopez though because of how they make their wines and to see what a large operation looks like. The size of the oak casks and the sheer scale needed to produce 15 million liters a year is very impressive when you've been visiting smaller producers.

As many others on this thread have stated, you're doing yourself a great service by hiring a driver. We biked to a few wineries in/around Chacras and never found Altavista as a result of a street being unmarked. We went with Ampora Wine Tours to the Uco Valley and hired a driver for 2 days in Lujon/Maipu. I have an extremely good sense of direction and can generally find places without much problem but I would have had a problem finding many of the wineries.

As for those we hired, I thought Ampora Wine Tours did an excellent job with our tour and the cost wasn't much different than hiring a driver for the day. Our driver for the other two days was based on a recommendation from the Vines of Mendoza (Jorge from VIP Services.) Jorge was very friendly, helped us rearrange the days/reservations as I had originally planned them when he realized there was a better way to approach those days. The rate we got for both days was also significantly less than what I expected from talking to multiple people before we hired him.

We spent our two days in Mendoza just wandering around the center of town without any interest in a schedule after 5 days of being on a schedule. We went to the Godoy Cruz futbol match, visted the markets/stalls around Mercado Central, visited the 5 main plazas and the night craft fairs, and even spent a little bit of time at the Mendoza zoo. There really isn't a lot of stuff you have to see in the City but at the same time it was really fun to see how the locals go about their days.

As for food, we never made it to 1884 because the futbol match was on Friday night (when we were going to go) but we did eat at La Bourgogne and Azafran. We found both to be an excellent experience, but we absolutely loved Azafran. I had talked to Pablo (the executive chef) in advance that we were coming for our anniversary and he pulled out all kinds of stops for us that were completely unnecessary but it also was an amazingly good time.

Many wineries have been recommended here for lunch, but I haven't seen anyone talk about having lunch at Terrazas. We thought Terrazas had the best lunch of all the places we tried (including Ruca Malen and O Fournier). It wasn't tremendously better but I would recommend that others consider going there for lunch if you're going to tour their winery.

We were sad to leave after 8 days but we were glad to be going home. I totally agree with Alex when he says you need 3-4 days touring wineries to get a true feel for the region. We were pretty "wined out" after 4 days but we also felt we got the true experience. I would have actually liked to have a 5th day to visit more of the wineries in/near Chacras and Mayor Drummond but I guess that is for another time.

Thanks again to everyone who contributes to this and other threads here. It's an excellent resource for planning a trip.