The 12 Best Things to Do in Mendoza

A winery in Las Compuertas where you can arrive by helicopter, which sets the tone. The Durigutti brothers focus on Malbec but also produce natural, organic, and rare cuvées that reward the detour. Cycling the vineyard rows and ending up at a gourmet picnic is a gentler option. The on-site guesthouse, Finca Victoria, has wooden-beamed ceilings and open fires. Ranked 11th on The World's 50 Best Vineyards list.

1. The 50 #11 · The World's 50 Best Vineyards

The wines age in an underground cellar called the Cava del Ángel, where Gregorian chants pipe through the walls on the theory that music helps them along. Whether or not that works, it sets the mood. Bodega Kaiken is a Mendoza winery and tasting experience, ranked on the World's 50 Best Vineyards, with vineyard walks, cellar tours, and Malbec pours framed by an unignorable view of the Andes. Francis Mallmann's open-fire restaurant is on site.

1. The 50 #36 · The World's 50 Best Vineyards

Paul Hobbs, one of the original Opus One winemaking team, built this glass and concrete winery in Luján de Cuyo to put Argentine Malbec on the global map, and it landed at #49 on the World's 50 Best Vineyards list. Small-group tours wind through the vineyards and underground cellar before settling into a curated tasting with food pairings. A second, more immersive experience runs up in the high-altitude Uco Valley, where the landscape does a lot of the convincing.

1. The 50 #49 · The World's 50 Best Vineyards

Classical statues and ornamental fountains line the grounds of the Arizu family's historic Maipú estate, which Luigi Bosca has opened as a wine tourism destination. Guided tours move through some of the winery's oldest vines before landing at a tasting, and the neoclassical mansion makes the whole thing feel less like a winery visit and more like crashing a very elegant garden party where everyone is extremely focused on malbec.

1. The 50 #70 · The World's 50 Best Vineyards

1. The 50 #95 · The World's 50 Best Vineyards

The building is modeled on a Mayan pyramid, which tells you something about the ambition before you've tasted a drop. Catena Zapata is a winery tour and tasting experience in Luján de Cuyo, and the family behind it did more than anyone to put Argentine Malbec on the world map. Tours take you into the barrel room, where you drink straight from the cask alongside charcuterie. Book ahead.

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

The concrete eggs and oak barrels are the giveaway: this is a biodynamic winery tour where the family leads you through the farm and cellar themselves, no guide with a laminated card in sight. The concentric vineyards and octagonal Brutalist bodega sit in the Andean desert valleys, and the philosophy, organic and minimal-intervention all the way, shapes everything from the animals roaming the estate to the wine you sip straight from the vessel.

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

The metal cupola crowning this stone-and-cement winery catches your eye long before you reach the door, and the building earns the attention. Zuccardi's tours of their Uco Valley estate have a way of making soil types genuinely absorbing, thanks to a research team that treats concrete fermentation vessels as a design problem worth obsessing over. The 50 Discovery recognized it, which tracks for a place that turns a winery visit into something closer to an architecture seminar.

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery