Bodega El Esteco — Restaurant in Municipio de Cafayate

If you like wine, DON‘T GO HERE! Let me be straight- the bodega is a beautiful place, and it‘s very well kept. The Corona measures make you feel safe. The staff is friendly. The tour is very thorough and professional, but after doing a couple wine tastings in Mendoza and Cafayate, I expected something more practical... like actual wine tasting! For your understanding: if you want to know about wine making, the plants, the procedure, the climate, the regions, the machinery, the bottles, the logistics, the amounts, the history, the scents, the varieties, the blending, and whatever comes to mind about wine production, brought to you in a very teacher-student-way, this is your place! Just don‘t expect to come anywhere near tasting the precious liquid in the first hour. And don‘t expect to get more than a tiny sip of any of the four featured wines, which is dealed as if it was god‘s personal stash of very limited holy ambrosia. And don‘t be surprised if some members of your tour get little snack plates with olives and crackers and walnuts while the rest of the group get to watch in envy because they didn‘t know there was a premium package available that was never mentioned in the process of buying the tickets on the phone or when paying them at the counter or at any point. Speaking of purchase, my pregnant wife who doesn‘t drink had to pay almost the full price. I leave it to you to compare that to what the other local wineries offer in that case. In the end, my head was spinning, my ears were bleeding and my throat was dry, and my wife and me felt so drained we had to fight the urge to go back to the hotel and call it a day. I am aware that every wine tasting is a sales pitch with an exit through the gift shop, and having payed the price of at the least one good bottle of wine on this one, I feel cheated. I am not exaggerating when I say this experience traumatized me to a point where I don‘t want to risk doing another wine tasting. I am glad I did tho, there is a bunch of lovely big and small places all over town that are worth visiting.

That said, every experience is different, and I wish you a great time in Cafayate. And I hope my review will help with that.

Cheers...

Great tour given but everyone was confused as to where and when it would start because it was past the starting time and we still hadn’t left. When the tour finished, we went to taste the wines. We got the more expensive wine tasting (extreme altitudes) of 5 wines for $3500 pesos or $12 USD.

Then we went horseback riding. This was one of the highlights of the trip for me. We talked to Ricardo who set up the 2 hour tour and met us there at the winery. By the time we finished the wine tour, apparently we were too late to do the full two hour tour (which is strange because they know what time we’ll finish…). So instead we did a loop around the vineyards in about an hour and a half. Our tour guide was super friendly and we loved how he gave us a little freedom to trot with the horses and get to know their processes. We loved being able to see how the baby responded to going out for its first loop with its mom. Because we didn’t do the full tour we only paid $2,500 pesos per person instead of $4,000 each. The lighting was beautiful and made the experience more enjoyable. I wish it could have been during the sunset a bit more. The resort itself looked well done, somewhat modern with traditional influences. We didn’t stay here but the families who were looked to enjoy themselves.

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Summary: Lovely location, average wines, average service. Much better experiences in almost all vineyards in Mendoza!

Having read the reviews for the other outside-of-town vineyards we choose El Esteco because it had the best recommendations. We were disappointed. The location was lovely, but the service was average at best. Using the same glasses for different types of wines (being half washed - ie: red wine smears left in the glass now being used for white wine) is something I’d expect in a night club, if that.

The descriptions for the wines on location was incredibly vague and left those of us who are not sommeliers wondering what the flavours we were tasting were/why they’d been chosen/infused (perhaps the tour enlightens attendees more - which we didn’t take part in).

Feedback: Menus/cards being provided to guests that described each wine in detail would be a simple and value enhancing addition. Providing a new fresh glass for each wine. You’re a winery, I would expect ‘enough’ glasses to be available which you mentioned there ‘wasn’t’. We also had to share a water glass between two. It seems as though the number of glasses available is...