Cafayate, Argentina - Day 5
Monday, April 10, 2023
The Easter holiday has come and gone. We’re continuing to stay in Cafayate this week, hoping it won’t be as busy as it has been during the Semana Santa (Holy Week). Visiting Cafayate’s many wineries is the number one thing to do here, but reservations for meals or tours & tastings have been hard to come by given the crowds.
At the start of our day, I blogged while the kids talked to their friends through Kids Messenger. It’s a 4-day holiday weekend (meaning, no school on Monday) for kids in the USA, so all of Tory and Aden’s friends are home from school today.
Around 11:30am, the four of us set off for lunch reservations at El Esteco Bodega. This is one of the best wineries in Cafayate, and conveniently located right down the road from our airbnb. We were finally able to get reservations for lunch at their restaurant called La Rosa, and Andi and I have been looking forward to this since we arrived in Cafayate.
El Esteco is one of the oldest wineries in Cafayate. Originally started in 1892 by two brothers from France, this property has a rich history of winemaking in the Calchaquí Valley. Today, the bodega is owned by the same company who distributes the Trapiche brand of wines in the USA. Some of the vines in the bodega’s vineyard are over 80 years old giving the high-altitude winery a nice range of everyday drinking wines to higher-end bottles.
Along with Restaurant La Rosa on the El Esteco property, there’s also a small colonial-style hotel. The whole property is dripping with charming patios, gardens, and an outdoor pool. There’s also a big green space and playground area near the restaurant for kids.
For our lunch reservation, our family was seated on the garden patio overlooking the pool. Andi and I chose to order the three-course food and wine pairing for our meals; Tory and Aden each picked entrees from the children’s menu — chicken milanese for Aden and noodles with red sauce for Tory.
To start, Andi and I were each served three different bite-sized croquettes stuffed with goat cheese, zucchini, and potato paired with an El Esteco Cabernet Sauvignon. We could have eaten a whole plateful of them — they were delicious!
Our entrees were buttery soft, fresh greens topped with dried beef, roasted eggplant, tomatoes, crispy corn kernels, blue cheese, and seeds — the perfect amount of food on a sunny, warm, 75-degree day. Our salads were served with one of El Esteco’s signature Malbecs.
A bit of a rant here — I love how family-friendly all the bodegas are in Cafayate, and especially El Esteco given its upscale atmosphere. It was great that Tory and Aden could run on the grassy lawn to play on the swings after they finished eating their meals. In fact, the restaurant patio was full of families dining together. The only negative of this kid-friendly environment is that not every family has respectful kids or the same parenting standards. Unfortunately, we were seated right next to an Argentine family with three young children. The toddler screamed and fussed during our entire meal while the dad talked on the phone and the mom drank her wine, half-heartedly attempting to calm the child by rocking its stroller back and forth. Andi and I were really looking forward to this meal at La Rosa and waited several days to get a reservation. Sad to say, the loudness of that family blemished our experience. As a mother, I completely understand that kids, and especially toddlers, are often noisy in restaurants but I find it annoying when parents do nothing to remedy the situation.
The final course of our meal was panna cotta served with a glass of El Esteco’s sweeter Torrontés wine. I was too full to eat any, but Andi thought it was delicious.
After our meal, the four of us returned to our airbnb. Tory, Aden, and I did school at the table while Andi took some calls.
Andi made another reservation for a tasting & tour this evening at a bodega called Finca Los Nubes. This winery came highly recommended by the American expat Andi consulted with when planning our trip to Argentina, so we were excited to check it out. This time, Tory and Aden asked if they could stay back at the airbnb to talk & play online games with their friends so we agreed to let them do so.
Finca Los Nubes is located on the outskirts of Cafayate about 15 minutes from the city center. Gravel roads in in Northern Argentina aren’t particularly smooth to drive on given the rocky terrain of the area, and the road to get to Finca Los Nubes in particular was in terrible condition. The road was being graded which created a huge mound of rocks and dirt humped in the center of the road. As we drove, our lane grew more and more narrow until Andi was forced to jump the dirt mound or run our rental car into the ditch. That necessary maneuver definitely altered our car’s alignment.
We arrived at Finca Los Nubes at 5:00pm for the scheduled tour. According to the bodega’s website, tours are given in Spanish but you can message them to request an English translation which Andi did for us. Unfortunately when we arrived, the man working the desk told us there were no such thing as English tours there. That was a bummer to hear! Instead, the man told us we were welcome to sit on the lawn and have a glass of wine if we liked.
Hands down, Finca Los Nubes had the best view of any of the bodegas we’d visited in Cafayate, but their service was terrible. Andi and I waited at a table on the lawn to be served for at least 15 minutes before I went to the door of the kitchen to request a menu. Eventually, we ordered two glasses of wine and the meat and cheese platter to share. We probably would have enjoyed another glass of wine, but our waiter never returned to our table. I had to knock on the door of the kitchen again to ask for our check. Service makes all the difference in this type of setting, and unfortunately Finca Los Nubes didn’t have it.
After the winery, Andi and I drove through town to get back to our airbnb. On the way, Andi stopped at the supermercado to buy a few more groceries and we chuckled to ourselves that this really is the nicest grocery store in town (as our airbnb owner told us)— but that wasn’t saying much. We bought a six-pack of eggs, some snacks, and a three-pack of paper towels. Our airbnb accommodations are nice, but there was only one roll of toilet paper in each bathroom, one trash bag, and no paper towels. That’s definitely not enough for our family of four to last eight days, so we had to go out and buy our own.
In town, Andi also stopped at the meat counter and was amused that the guy working there recognized him from the other day. “Ah, Canada!” he said when Andi entered the carniceria. He called Andi ‘Canada’ because Andi told him the other day it was very cold where we live. Andi commented that he likes this particular meat market because the butcher grinds the hamburger to order. I have to say, Andi’s done pretty well learning to order meat in kilos on this trip!
After a boozy lunch and happy hour at bodegas in Cafayate, we were ready for an early bedtime tonight. Andi warmed up some leftover sloppy joe meat for the kids’ dinner, and then we watched a few episodes of Ted Lasso to round out our evening.
Tomorrow and Wednesday are longer work days for Andi, so we’ll hang around this airbnb for two more days. We’d originally planned to travel on to the town of Cachi afterwards, but have recently changed our itinerary. Andi has quarterly work meetings in Minneapolis at the end of next week that he’d like to attend, so we’ve decided to end our Argentine travels here in Cafayate. It’s bittersweet knowing our time in this country is coming to an end, but we’re also excited to go back to the comforts of home.
