Ah, leave it to the NY Times to ruin yet something else for the rest of us.

I spent two weeks in the Mendoza area last January and thoroughly enjoyed myself. A word of note on doing any type of wine tasting expedition in the region: it is not easy. The region is generally very poorly sign posted. You will need a very good guidebook and an excellent map in order to find the wineries outside of town. We spent a full day driving around and only got to one winery before we really figured out what the heck we were doing. Get the Wine Map for the region when you get down there.