Learn Argentine Wines With an Urban Wine Tour | KevinRichberg

Personally, I love traveling across hemispheres to flip the seasons. There's nothing like beating theJanuary blues in North America by sipping chilled wines in the heat of an 85 degree summer inSouth America.

We took a group photo to give everyone a sense of the interest this monthly tour receives. I have toadmit, I entered the evening expecting a couple dozen folks to give it a go, and was pretty amazedthat the actual turnout is more like dozens of dozens.

This is how it works: Each year the Wine Tour Urbano dates and the meeting point are listed on thewebsite, along with the map for that month's festivities. No need to sign-up, you just show up! Asyou make your way to the meeting point, listen for the music guiding you to the WTU banner(pictured above). If you find the banner, the hard part is over, it's all reds and whites from there!

Each Wine Tour adventurer purchases a wine glass, which acts as your ticket to evening's tastings.You can enter your name into the nightly raffle (held at the tour's conclusion three hours later), andan electronic map on your cell phone becomes your guide to that night's tasting locales.

When you visit Buenos Aires, you'll be tucked up in the Argentine Northeast Coast, along the Rio

Plata. The luscious, powerful wines from the valleys of Mendoza are along the Andes all the way onthe western side of the nation. The crisp, refreshing wines of the Rio Negro are a twelve hour driveto the south.

Wine Tour Urbano lasts around three hours, and of course you can start and stop whenever you like.The "three hours" gives the wineries an idea of how much product to provide, and to give the wineexplorers a time frame to visit all the different participating venues (the goal, of course, is not to getso blotto you forget where you are -- in Buenos Aires -- it's to give you enough time to leisurely sipand taste, while making mental notes of your favorites).

Photos of Wine Tour Urbano were taken on January 9th, 2015 by Kevin Richberg; Photo of LaEsmeralda provided by Ignacio Videla Dorna.

My first tasting led me to Argentina's signature grape varietal, the Malbec. This inky-dark grape isplanted across over 50,000 acres of Argentine valleys and accounts for a majority of its sizable wineexports. The worldwide demand for dark robust Argentine Malbecs has propelled the nation to 5thon the list of wine producing countries (following Italy, France, Spain, and the United States).

Wine Tour Urbano isn't about choosing specific wines to hawk with a captive audience (I wouldn'thave written this piece had it been simply a dressed up sales pitch). Different wineries participateeach and every time, making the experience a true showcase of oenology and old fashioned tastetesting. Winemakers choose to present the results of their craft out of a sense of pride, and a

confidence that word of mouth from discerning palates will boost their commercial successes.

Enter: Wine Tour Urbano -- where the wineries of Argentina make their way to the streets of BuenosAires for a monthly tasting extravaganza.

At its conclusion, the participants gather back at the starting point where Sol, the creator of WineTour Urbano, finishes the evening http://www.royalelimo.com/ with a wine bottle raffle.

Argentina also produces stellar whites, still and sparkling. On my own personal quest to try newwines, I discovered the Argentine white powerhouse -- the Torronts. Consideredhttp://www.limos.com/limo-price-guide to be Argentina's creation, the Torronts comprises thelargest percentage of white grape acreage in the nation, and is steadily increasing due to growing

overseas popularity.

With your WTU glass in hand you travel to each of the hosting locations (they could be hotel lobbies,sometimes jewelry stores, sometimes cafes, ect.), where you find a different winery from Argentinaand a sommelier ready to serve you wine and knowledge. Ask as many questions as you want, this isan opportunity for Argentina to introduce you to her offerings.

But what happens when you travel to a spectacular, world famous wine producing country, but endup over 600 miles from the nearest winery?

Wine is a passion! For the producers, for the consumers, for Argentina, and for me, wine is mostcertainly a passion. Viticulture is the 7,000 year old hobby we continually love to celebrate.

The wines transport executive limousines melbourne you to places throughout Argentina, far beyondthe setting of Buenos Aires. This image comes from the Valle Medio de Rio Negro (almost 600 milesfrom Buenos Aires), home of the newly restored Establecimiento La Esmeralda, a winery from theearly 20th Century forced to shutter its doors in the late 50s, only to find new 21st Century life inthe hands of Ignacio Videla Dorna, who I was able to personally meet during Wine Tour Urbano. Hisvines had only been in the ground since 2008, and their signature 2013 wines were making theirdebut appearances at Wine Tour.

So Cheers!

Cheers to Sol and the city of Buenos Aires for putting on such a fantastic and educational event.

Cheers to Argentina for making some of the World's most impressive wines. Cheers to the idea of"Educational Tourism," stepping out for an incredibly evening and returning more knowledgeablythan when you started!