In Cuiaba, Brazil, tonight, with an 0700h departure for a 3-hour drive towards the Pantanal tomorrow.
Wandered a few hundred metres down the road tonight to a churrascaria (
Churrascaria - Wikipedia.).
Now, I knew vaguely that this was a Brazilian BBQ style place but I had not experienced it directly before. An endless procession of waiters kept coming out with various grilled meats on a large skewer, from which you could choose a portion to be carved (ie. point to the middle for rare or to the edge for well done) that you pick up with a small set of tongs as part of your cutlery. Beef, lamb, chicken, sausage plus many specific types and cuts that I could not understand as none of the waiters spoke English.
Interesting enough, but after a while frankly annoying. There hardly seemed a moment to relax as the endless offers were made, and I found a lot of the meats tough. Accompanied by my intense pet hate - a buffet. Salads, vegetables and desserts. I would not do it again.
I soothed myself with a bottle of Argentinian Malbec from San Juan. While they had quite a few Mendoza Malbecs of fairly high order (up to Catena Zapata Angelica which I’ve slurped before in Mendoza), I opted for the solo San Juan job on the list for a couple of reasons:
I visited there on a driving excursion in W Argentina a few years ago and went to a couple of wineries. In San Juan they are trying to differentiate themselves from Mendoza by making Syrah. I recall talking to one person who, on recognising that I was from Australia exclaimed “I wish we could make Shiraz like Australia.” My immediate response, of course, was “I wish Australia could make Malbec like Argentina!”
I had an interesting experience with a motor-bike traffic cop trying to shake me down. Now, this guy was bigger and meaner-looking than
@juddles 
. Combat boots, fatigues tucked in, beret, low-slung .45... The stuff of movies.
I got pulled over on the freeway heading S just out of San Juan. Immediately realised I had forgotten to turn on the (manually-operated) headlights (mandatory in Argy) on my rental car after stopping for fuel.
Immediately wary of a shakedown, I go - with no effort whatsoever
- into a mode that could loosely be described as
el stupido Australiano. Not a word of my dreadfully fractured Espanol breached my lips. Every babbled assertion of ‘infracion’, while this big guy stood in front of my with my driver’s license and rental car papers in his hand (but, notably, no ticket book), was met with a polite “I do not understand what you are saying, sir.”
Mexican standoff. Repeat, rinse; repeat, rinse. Several iterations later, el stupido eventually triumphs - of course.
So that’s my segue into choosing the San Juan Malbec tonight
.
It was a good wine. A little different from the Mendoza and Valle de Uco styles, rather in the same way that Martinborough Pinots differ from Central Otago - a little more earthy and a little less plush.
All this is also timely as my wine-tasting group’s theme this month is Malbec - so I’m with
@Daver6 in spirit, if not in person
.
