The pride of Mendoza

All year long, Mendoza gears up for the festival that celebrate the harvesting of its grapes: the Festival de la Vendimia. The festival started in 1936 and grows each year, recently seemingly for the benefit of tourists who flock the area to enjoy Mendoza's biggest annual party.

Is it worth being in Mendoza for Vendimia?

For wine-lovers, vendimia in Mendoza is sadly dry, unlike the great opportunity in the Colchagua Valley and Molina, Chile where vendimia offers a chance to taste local wines in the plaza while snacking on local specialties. The biggest events to attend include:

• Vendimia Parade occurs on Friday night and Saturday morning, and includes gauchos on horses and local department (basically a county) beauties in the running to be the Vendimia Queen. Each department puts together elaborate floats which hold the queen competitors and local young ladies in their prom dresses throwing fruit at the crowd. Grapes: OK, but please don't throw that apple at my head! My favorite part of the parade was the ever so Argentine float including a young cow in a cage as well as several grills with cooking meat. More funny than the float itself were the responses that surrounded me: 1) older Argentine ladies next to me shouting, ¡Que rico! How delicious and 2) a British friend saying “poor little cow, watching its mother roast”.

• The election of the Queen and Show For months leading up to the event, a beauty pageant-style competition narrows down one queen contender from each department of Mendoza. The weekend of vendimia, a Queen is elected followed by an impressive show of song and dance relating to the history of winemaking in Mendoza. The show truly is impressive, especially this year with its fantastic live music appearance of Mercedes Sosa, an Argentine folklórico legend. The show wraps up with an incredible firework show choreographed with fantastic music, that honestly puts 4th of July to shame.

• Gay Vendimia, formerly an event seen as scandalous by the conservative Mendocinian population, Gay Vendimia is now an institution. This year La Turca, a famous and loved Mendocinian transvestite and hetero model and actor Cristian Sancho emceed the show, which was an election of “queens” and spoof on the mainstream beauty pageant.

• Winery events are relatively few and far between, but there's the opportunity to pay $80 to pick grapes and eat an asado at Familia Zuccardi... There is certainly future potential for wineries to take advantage of the large tourist population in town for Vendimia with creative options to lure wine lovers.

The dark side of vendimia

This graffiti messaged popped up around vendimia time: Vendimia...one queen, one thousand slaves. The focus of vendimia is most certainly not on the winery harvest workers, whose pay and working conditions are some of the worst in Argentina. Workers are often from Bolivia or Peru, called gaviotas (seagulls) for the seasonal nature of their work.