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Buenos Aires wine tasting?


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I have googled and found one place in BA with wine tasting class, the club Del Vino. Can I get this class or somewhere else in English? I speak some Spanish but am hardly fluent. I bought a few books, but its hardly the same, so far I have tried Broquel Malbec which was simple but very masculine and would work great with a steak! RR

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If you want just a basic introduction to Argentine wine - a one-shot, 2-3 hour class that covers the regions, grapes, and basic info, try Buenos Vinos who offer a weekly English language class on Thursdays. I believe that our own Gaucho, here, offers tastings in English at his store, Terroir as well.

SaltShaker - Casting a little flavor (and a few aspersions) on the world of food, drink, and life

Casa SaltShaker - Restaurant de Puertas Cerradas

Spanish-English-Spanish Food & Wine Dictionary - a must for any traveler!

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Thanks for the info, I e-mailed both of your suggested places. I am not sure if others in my group will want to join me. But I think if I buy a case of wine to take home that would make it more worthwhile for them.

Thanks also for the previous reply. I am anxiously waiting to go to El Obrero!

How extensive is their wine list? Anything special that you remember? RR

Edited by RRainey (log)
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El Obrero is about the steak, not the wine. You won't find anything particularly special on it, most of the wines are under 25 pesos a bottle - solid, basic local wine. It's an old-style neighborhood steakhouse - we're talking battered wooden chairs, tables, and floors, walls that have so much smoke on them you can't tell what they're made of... you get the picture.

SaltShaker - Casting a little flavor (and a few aspersions) on the world of food, drink, and life

Casa SaltShaker - Restaurant de Puertas Cerradas

Spanish-English-Spanish Food & Wine Dictionary - a must for any traveler!

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Thanks for the reply, it sounds great. My favorite wine so far is Catena Zapata malbec which is an 18 dollar wine here, very nice and balanced.

It looks like a lot of the blends are a little pricey. I guess going for the international market. Are there any that are worth the high price?

So far no response from Buenos vinos or Terrior. maybe they are not used to making plans 3 months in advance? RR

Edited by RRainey (log)
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Well, I know Alex from Terroir is in NYC at the moment, so maybe he's not checking his e-mail as regularly as normal. Don't know why the others didn't respond, not like them. On the other hand, you're right in your guess - 3 months in advance here is like a futuristic dream. One local friend once told me that anything more than 3 days in advance is something no one here would ever do - and he's not far off. I'm slowly getting used to that.

Keep in mind that high prices on wines in the states don't necessarily mean high prices here - same with low prices sometimes. It's all about marketing. You can get perfectly good, quality wine here, for easily in the 10-20 peso range in a store, and not much higher in a restaurant. You can spend more, but it's not always worth it - sometimes yes, sometimes no. And here and there, especially for "international style" wines that were really made for the export market, they actually cost more here than in the U.S. - whether it's true or not, I've been told that they get sold to the exporter who then resells them back to here at a markup!

SaltShaker - Casting a little flavor (and a few aspersions) on the world of food, drink, and life

Casa SaltShaker - Restaurant de Puertas Cerradas

Spanish-English-Spanish Food & Wine Dictionary - a must for any traveler!

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From the "expat" perspective - they're definitely not as cheap as they were after the economic collapse - the economy has done a fair amount of recovery in a lot of sectors, especially in restaurant prices. Even in the year and a half I've been living here, I'd say restaurant prices have gone up around 35%. That said, by U.S./Euro standards, it's still a bargain, but not what it was, and it's still climbing.

In terms of by local standards... hard to say. The official "average" wage for a day here in BsAs is 35 pesos, with probably 10+ hours of work put in to earn that. But that takes into account a huge range of population, from poverty level to the top levels, of just citizens. A middle class salary probably runs at about 3000 pesos a month, or only about 100 a day. That makes eating out pretty tough, especially if you want "good" food. On the other hand, there's such a range of restaurants depending on where you live and what you want - from places that sell basic sandwiches for a peso and a half, or 50 cents, on up to top restaurants that run over a hundred pesos a person for dinner, coming in around $35-40 for a meal.

There's also, based on the cyclical history of economic collapses here, a regular fear, I think, amongst a lot of locals, that it's only a matter of a few more years before the next one. So there's a certain level of socking money away, preferably in dollars or euros, either in cash or in banks out of the country, as a precaution - so even among those with some bucks, they often will avoid eating out anywhere "nicer" other than for a special occasion. Salaries have definitely not gone up as fast as prices have, which is a real problem... and, like past cycles, one of the main contributions to the collapses... so look for it around 2008/9...

SaltShaker - Casting a little flavor (and a few aspersions) on the world of food, drink, and life

Casa SaltShaker - Restaurant de Puertas Cerradas

Spanish-English-Spanish Food & Wine Dictionary - a must for any traveler!

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That's an interesting perspective. My take on the same situation is that, in general here, it's not the foreigners with extra money who are "pushing up" the prices, but the people who live here who see that folks in 1st world countries have more than they do and get greedy for it - they push (or pull?) the prices up by demanding more - some of them get it (from those pesky foreigners), some of them don't, and when it reaches the point where they're demanding too much, we get another collapse.

SaltShaker - Casting a little flavor (and a few aspersions) on the world of food, drink, and life

Casa SaltShaker - Restaurant de Puertas Cerradas

Spanish-English-Spanish Food & Wine Dictionary - a must for any traveler!

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  • 4 weeks later...

RRainey-- Sorry for the belated response to this thread. Im not sure if we have responded to your email contact, Im afraid that if you emailed us to our general inquiry address it may have gotten caught by our anti-spam software.

I will PM you and see you I can be of assistance.

Visit Argentina and try wines from the RIGHT side of the Andes !!!

www.terroir.com.ar

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