Winemaking in the Andes

(InnerSelf Enabled🎭) Five in the morning in the Valle de Uco, the Andes going pink above forty hectares of old Malbec, and the Cerutti family is short of pickers. You have a pair of shears, a plastic bin and a tin token for every bin you fill. For one harvest you live on Finca Las Tunas: picking from first light, siesta in the heat, asado under the quincho at night. Malena has come home to make the wine her father never could. Her sister Candela is somehow running for Vendimia queen. Agus runs the crew like a drill sergeant, Jimena runs the grill like nobody's business, and a sommelier from Buenos Aires keeps finding reasons to stay another week. Hail warnings, the hot zonda wind, a rival bodega next door, parades in Mendoza and a fiesta when the last bin comes in. A warm, sunburnt slice-of-life romance in Argentine wine country.