The Tour Less Taken

So, we´re in Mendoza right now, which is Argentina´s wine country, home of the world-renowned Malbec and other allegedly mind-boggling elixirs. Just got back from a group tour of two wineries and an olive farm, which was good fun and would have been deeply, deeply educational had I A) attained that ever- elusive Spanish fluency before embarking or B) come to this wine tour with, like, ANY prior knowledge of wine.

Again, folks, I am not a fluent Spanish speaker. Baby steps, though; I now understand almost every single word said in my presence, as long as everyone near me shuts up for at least five seconds after every sentence said aloud. Whisper to your neighbor, turn on the radio, or speak your second sentence while I´m still gnawing on the first one, however, and I´m toast. I also find that recognizing every single word in isolation is NOT the same thing as understanding what´s been said: I sometimes feel like a kindergartener who, having finally mastered the alphabet song, is thrown a book of Dostoyevski because the letters are the same. Today´s best example would be my initial understanding that the kindly lady winemaker had made changes to the tour after dozens of tourists were torn to pieces in the past; Andrea informed me that, actually, we just weren´t supposed to toast with our glasses because the bodega was sick of replacing the broken ones.

So, that´s column A working against me. In column B, we have my absolute ignorance of All Things Wine. It comes from grapes, it sits around for awhile before you can drink it, and it plays some kind of pivotal role in a crap Keanu Reeves movie. Also, people talk about it smelling like things that can´t possibly be in it; the more wine snobbier you get, the more and weirder things you recognize. This, my friends, was the sum total of knowledge I brought with me on Wine Tour.

Nevertheless, it was fun. I followed all instructions for swirling and sniffing as best as I could, and, although it´s the freaking dead of winter here and we didn´t get to actually see a single grape, I did appreciate a closer connection to the people who make the stuff I don´t understand. I perked up significantly for the olive oil tour, as well, as I had a toehold on what made it complex and delicious.

Bringing me to my modest proposal for another kind of Tasting, also featuring a treasured part of Argentina´s cultural heritage. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me on the Tour de Submarino.

We will not, on this journey, be going underseas. The Argentinian Submarino is simply a bar of chocolate, sunk into a glass of hot milk. Bringing us not one, but TWO products to sample and obsess about!

First, the milk part. If people spend hours waxing poetic about the many varieties of grapes and the complicated fermenting process, I think Tour de Submarino can become equally obsessed about sub-species of cow. According to Wikipedia (granted that I Googled ¨beef¨. but the ladies must be doing something while we barbecue the menfolk...), there are six main breeds in the country to choose from; I´m thinking that each would yield a milk which can be described with different ridiculous adjectives. Ideally, participants could try their hands at milking at least one sample cow before proceeding to the Whisking Room to discover how best to froth it. Whole milk or low fat? Perhaps a touch of cream? And in which direction does a TRUE afectionado stir it? So many areas for discussion and study.

And next, of course, the question of chocolate. I imagine two seperate tastings here. For the first, one samples tiny perfect shavings off of six different chocolate bars, possibly using fancy silver tweezers to lift and inspect without melting them in your hands. Since I´ve been reminded today that wine often tastes of chocolate (alas, one slight misunderstanding of that led me to EXPECT a bit of chocolate at the end of the tour), it´s obligatory at this point to compare the chocolate to wine. The better shavings, I think, would have a slight hint of Malbec.

For the final tasting, one receives an eyedropper and a miniature shotglass. Following the careful and elegant instructions of an impeccably dressed Submarinero, participants combine various varieties of milk with various tiny squares of chocolate, testing for such crucial qualities as Floatiness and Sweet.

Who´s with me?