Bouza Winery - Montevideo

 This winery is about 8 miles north of Montevideo in rolling countryside.

This winery was originally built in the 40's and was restored and enlarged in 2001 by the Bouza family. 

Interestingly enough, the original family had to flee the country in the early 80's.

Our agenda here today was a winery tour, a wine tasting and a great meal. So let's start with the tour shall we?

 

It's summer here; the equivalent of our July. As you can see the grapes are beginning to ripen. This is a dry vineyard which means they don't irrigate their vines. They've added granite chips to keep the low hanging vines clean and to hold in the moisture.

According to our tour guide these grapes are about 3 weeks from having the proper sugar content for harvest.

As a matter of fact, you'll see a glass of Tannant wine wound up on our table. That wine came from these same vines a couple years ago.

Here's the cellar and our tour guide explaining how they fill the kegs from the stainless tanks above. And here's a close up of one or their oak kegs

 

Last, but not least is the wine tasting and lunch. Unbeknownst to us, they combine those two activities into one. I really enjoyed it. This might have been my favorite part of Montevideo!!

 

OK now... Off to bed because the driver is picking us up at 4am to fly to Lima!!

 P.S. Here's a four leaf clover Patrice found while few were waiting for our ride home.  I think our luck is going yo change