Mendoza Wine Tasting Tours

Mendoza has more than 1,500 wineries, and almost every visitor books the same kind of day: a van, three cellars, a guide, and someone else at the wheel. What separates a $32 afternoon from a $450 one is not really the wine. It is the distance.

The three regions are three different drive times

Mendoza’s wine country divides into three districts, and they sit at three very different removes from the city you are staying in.

Maipú is the closest, about thirty minutes east, and the oldest — the first part of the province planted to vines. It is where the cheap tours go, and “cheap” here means genuinely good value rather than thin: the two lowest-priced tours on this site pour nine glasses each across three cellars and an olive oil mill, entry fees included, for the price of two glasses in a wine bar at home. Maipú’s cellars are close together, so a van can fit four visits into an afternoon without anyone spending the day in traffic.

Luján de Cuyo is thirty to forty minutes south-west, and it is where Malbec was rescued. In 1989 it was designated Argentina’s first Denominación de Origen Controlada — the first on the American continent — created specifically to protect a grape that growers were then pulling out in favour of higher-yielding or better-known varieties. That decision is the reason Argentina has a signature red at all. Tours here cost more because the estates charge more at the door, and the good ones name their wineries rather than drawing from a rotating pool.

The Uco Valley is ninety minutes each way, and that is the whole story of its price. Vineyards sit between roughly 900 and 1,500 metres above sea level, with the Gualtallary district near Tupungato climbing close to 1,600 — high enough that cold nights stretch the ripening season and keep acidity in the fruit. It is the newest of the three regions, the most architecturally spectacular, and the one that international wine lists have spent the last decade discovering. A Uco day is three hours of driving before anybody pours anything, which is why it costs three to ten times a Maipú afternoon.

If you have one day, that is the decision: proximity and volume, history and Malbec, or altitude and architecture. If you have three, do one of each — and do them in that order, because Uco’s wines will make the Maipú ones taste simple if you go the other way round.

Why almost nobody drives themselves

Argentina’s national zero-alcohol driving law applies on national routes, and Ruta 40 — the road into the Uco Valley — is one of them. Provincial rules have been contested and have changed more than once in recent years, so the limit that applies on a given stretch of Mendoza’s wine roads is genuinely worth checking before you plan to drive. What is not in dispute is that the roads between the cellars are rural, unlit after dark, and shared with farm traffic.

That is why the guided-tour market here is so developed, and why the comparison on this page is between kinds of tour rather than between touring and driving. The cheapest tours are shared vans that collect ten guests from ten hotels — a loop that takes about 45 minutes, so whoever is picked up first rides most of an hour before the last one boards. The mid-range is semi-private: your own guide-driver, two cellars, a long lunch. The top end is a private car with a certified sommelier, and at that level the ticket sometimes buys the day rather than the wine, with winery fees and lunch paid directly on arrival. Read what is included before you compare two prices.

Vines in a desert, under nets

Mendoza gets roughly the rainfall of a desert, and everything green in it stands on a canal network the Huarpes dug before the Spanish arrived. Every guide here opens with that, because it is the thing that explains the landscape: the vineyards stop dead at a line in the sand, and the line is wherever the water stops.

The black mesh stretched over the rows is the region’s other defining feature. Mendoza’s summer hail can strip a vineyard in fifteen minutes, and the nets are what stand between a grower and a lost vintage. You will see them from the moment you leave the city, and they are the quickest way to tell a Mendoza vineyard photograph from a Californian one.

When to come

Harvest — vendimia — runs through the late southern summer, and the Fiesta Nacional de la Vendimia, held annually since 1936, culminates in the first week of March. It is the busiest and most atmospheric week of the Mendoza year, and the one when tours and winery restaurants sell out furthest ahead. The cellars are working rather than performing, which is the appeal.

Outside that, February to April gives you fruit on the vines and warm days; September to November gives you snow still on the peaks behind green new growth, which is the better photograph. Winter is quiet and cheap, and several of the premium estates reduce their opening days.

Choosing between them

Our full breakdown of which Mendoza wine tour suits which kind of traveller — by budget, by region, by how much you actually want to drink — is in the which Mendoza wine tour is right for you guide, and the full tour comparison lists every option with its live price and rating. If you already know your region, start with Maipú, Luján de Cuyo or the Uco Valley.