It has been 5 years since I visited Argentina.  I went there to learn Argentine Tango, not for the wine so most of my time was spent at Tango Schools in the city of Buenos Aires. When I saw that the BC Hospitality Foundation’s DISH ’N DAZZLE 2018 was featuring Wines of Argentina, I thought it was time to get an overview and taste of the wines.

The  DISH ’N DAZZLE event is a fund raiser for for the BCHF which supports people in the hospitality industry who face financial crises due to health issues and have no other source of help. BCHF also provides training scholarships.

The DISH component, complements the evening wine tasting, featuring food bites from 14 Vancouver Chefs. Since I was at the trade tasting in the afternoon, I didn’t get to taste their offerings but the descriptions on the poster boards that I read as I made my way around the room, sounded mouth-wateringly good.

Malbec being the pre-eminent grape one thinks of in the context of Argentina, the wines on  display were predominantly red wines. I realized after the first couple of tastings that In keeping with the reality of  “use it or lose it “, my red wine taste buds and liver enzymes had not been sufficiently exercised for a long time and were clearly under par for evaluating reds.  So I decided to leave the heavy wine lifting to the intense swillers and spitters that were crowding the tables and set off in search  of a lighter summer sipping wine. I did find two rosé wines that I liked a lot as well as some less full-bodied reds that I could see sipping on my patio at my next barbecue.

The 6 wines that won the 2017 Argentina Wine Awards were there for tasting. My favourite was the 2016 Los Haroldos Hermandad Blend.

My eye was caught by a display of vSpin, a novel wine aerating system and I stopped by to chat with the inventor. Then I headed out to walk home, with  my short list of wines for exercising my red wine taste buds and liver enzymes over the summer.