March 22, 2006
Day 175
The main thing Cafayate is famous for is wine. All around the city are huge fields of grapes. The local wine tastes good and is dirt cheap, sometimes costing as little as $1 per bottle.
Today, I went on a free tour offered by my hostel of some of the area's bodegas. The first bodega was very modern, and we got to watch the whole process of turning grapes into wine. The best part was that we got to taste some of the wine at the end of the tour.
Next, we went to another bodega. This one was 150 years old and family-owned. The entire wine-making process used to be done manually, and we were shown several of the old machines used to crush and extract juice from the grapes. The tour was also accompanied by another wine tasting.
Finally, our tour took us to a farm specializing in goat cheese. Outside, a bunch of smelly, flea-ridden goats were grazing. Inside, the bodily fluids of those goats were extracted and turned into an edible byproduct. Surprisingly, the cheese actually tasted pretty good.
