Good people

Kindness, warmth and the willingness to help seems to run in the veins of the Argentinians.
Maxi and the guys working in our hotel in Buenas Aires were genuinely sweet and introduced us to Dulche de Leche.

Luis and his wife Celeste at the local little resturant around the corner from our hotel. Great steaks, invitations into the kitchen and presents for Sofia.

Everyone who've we've stopped and asked for directions between Buenas Aires to Mendoza including street workers, cafe owners, random people on their bikes. We're always met with big smiles and genuine concern that we've understood their directions.

The ever interesting Lionel, who, while taking us through a tasting of 12 of his family's wines, refreshed us on Argentinian modern history. Eloquent and generous with his time, we spent a good 2 hours talking and tasting. He even brought out his old toys for Sofia to play with and introduced her to sticks of ice to crunch on.

The squidgy hugs and kisses that welcomed us at Mi Casa in Mendoza. The original style B&B where you stay with a family in their home. Lorena, Jorge, Trinidad and Lola (their German Shepard who let Sofia ride on her back) were wonderfully warm and loving. Sofia disappeared within 10mins of us arriving being instantly adopted by her big sister Trinnie. Big asada BBQ dinners, laughs, interesting conversations, lovely other guests - Fanny, Natalie and Britten - all made our 2 day stay so memorable.

The wonderfully generous and genuinely lovely Patricio at Riccardo Santa's winery. He and his brother Pedro run their family vineyards and Patricio makes the best Malbec you've ever tasted. Pedro collects homeless dogs on their property. On arriving there were 16, with the most recent addition being 'Mario' - or as Sofia would say 'Mah-yo'. We spent 2 hours simply chatting and drinking his wines at a long wooden table.  He made our trip to Maipu worth every bit of gravelly road. What a good man.

And finally, Naomi, the lovely woman working at Miguel Mas - an organic vineyard that produced bubbly among the standard Malbec, Chardonnay, Cab Sav. They followed the classic method for the bubbly but it was all done by hand. Freezing the sediment in little standup frezers, removal of the frozen sediment, corking and caging. She demonstrated everything for us using only one bottle. She then simply kept adding a syrupy liquid made of wine and sugar to the bottle to create the Nature, ExtraBrut, Brut and Sweet versions. The French and Italians would have shaken their heads in disbelief. When she was finished, she she grabbed another bottle, filled up the one she'd been using and corked and caged it! Haha! Brilliant! My favourite however was the plastic Gatorade bottle in the cave. It was filled with bubbly and resting on top of stacked bottles. Its purpose? To test how how the fermentation process was tracking :).

We bought a bottle to enjoy that a evening as our aperitivo. We were so excited to have some bubbly. We poured a glass each, tasted it, realised it resembled fizzy cat pee, ditched it and stuck to sparkling water!