Turkey-Free Weekend: Wine & Cheese in Uruguay

More often than not, I’m away from my California home during the so-called “holiday season,” when turkey is on the table and packages accumulate beneath a wilting conifer on so many living room floors, and I’m OK with that. This year, while many if not most people in the United States are enjoying a four-day mini-holiday, I’m spending the same weekend working my way through hotels, restaurants, bars, museums and other services in the Uruguayan cities of Colonia del Sacramento (a UNESCO
World Heritage Site) [2] and Montevideo [2].

Eventually, most of this material will end up in the next edition of Moon Buenos Aires [3], which isn’t quite due for an update yet, but it will also see light of day in a separate project on which I am working at the moment [4]. The fact that I’m working, though, doesn’t mean it can’t be relaxing and rewarding, as it was last night when I attended a small wine tasting at La Vinería de Colonia [5].

I’ve visited quite a few Uruguayan wineries [6], most of them in the vicinity of Montevideo, and several times on this blog I’ve spoken of the country’s underrated wines. Bodega Bernardi [7] is the only one easy-to-visit winery in the vicinity of Colonia, but La Vinería stocks a diversity of Uruguayan and imported wines, with daily afternoon and evening tastings in typical quarters in the colonial Barrio Histórico. I arrived too late for the afternoon tasting but, around 7 p.m., I got there just in time to join the evening event with a couple from Los Angeles.

The festivities started with an unusual choice: Bodega Marichal [8]’s unusual blend of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir (pictured above) isn’t really a rosé, but its copper color certainly out. I’m personally not a Chardonnay lover, but I found it interesting for a one-time sample that others might find appealing as an aperitif. As I finished that glass, co-owner Carolina Rosberg brought a platter of cold cuts, fruit and cheeses – Colonia is part of an important dairy zone – to complement my following glass of Deicas Pinot Noir [9] which, as she pointed out, is more acidic than comparable Argentine wines because the climate and terroir are so different here.

The evening’s final sample was a dark red Tannat from Bodega El Legado [10], a tiny winery near Carmelo that produces only 2,000 bottles per annum on less than a hectare of vines. Accompanying it were two succulent lamb empanadas and, by the time I finished those, I decided I had consumed enough wine and food to forgo any possible dinner. I spent a little more time walking the Barrio Histórico’s cobbled streets before returning to my hotel and sleeping soundly through the night.