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About Nikki Knaddison

Recently returned from a year living, working, and traveling through the Spanish-speaking world, Nikki is excited to start sharing her lifelong love of the Spanish language through Spanish classes in the Denver area. Spanish really came alive to Nikki while studying abroad in Argentina in 2000. At its core, language allows us to communicate and to connect with people and cultures in a way that would be
impossible without knowledge of the language.

Music from Julieta Venegas

Julieta has been a hit for the past decade throughout Latin American, and rightly so. Her songs are so light and catchy it's easy to overlisten to her albums. Her most recent release, Limón y Sal, is full of great songs with plenty of variety: from nearly hip hop, to ballads accompanied by romantic guitar, and rounded out by upbeat poppy songs. Though born in Long Beach, California, Julieta grew up in Tijuana and her Spanish-language pop/rock has truly crossed borders within Latin America and more recently, in the US.

Her lyrics are easy to understand and listening to them is great Spanish practice!

Her newest album, MTV Unplugged is incredible and features this great adaptation of "Ilusión" with Brazilian Marisa Monte. The song is a beautiful combination of Spanish and Portuguese.

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Wine from the end of the earth: Patagonian reds

Wineries of Patagonia: Dino Vino

A relatively new wine industry is cropping up in Neuquén, Argentina, a province making up the north of Patagonia, known for its dinosaur bones. The three wineries we visited, NQN, Bodega del fin del Mundo, and Familia Schroeder, are all relatively large wineries with decent advertising budgets. Their success has been notable outside of Argentina, perhaps due to the allure of drinking a wine from an area thought to be exotic and uncontaminated. The wines, however, are not just enjoyed abroad: a recent article reported residents of Neuquén consume more wine than milk in their diets.

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A Family-Run Boutique Winery: Bodega Sottano

Bodega Sottano's story

On the same road where you'll find Séptima and Ruca Malén, relatively new winery Sottano is making some great wines and is opening its doors to winery tours. The winery is a shared project of the three Sottano brothers, natives of Mendoza with Italian heritage and a family history of bulk winemaking. The winery building was designed by the brothers with the goals of fitting into the desert landscape of Mendoza and on the inside, being able to see all aspects of the winery from one place: the cellars and barrels, the tanks, the vineyard, and, of course, the beautiful Andes mountains that provide the water runoff that makes grape-growing possible in Mendoza.

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Bodega La Azul

La Azul Winery

This enormously cute winery in Valley de Uco of Mendoza, Argentina, La Azul is one of the smallest production wineries we've visited. Perhaps their size allows the focus and attention needed to produce some incredible wines. Like many wineries in Mendoza, Azul is a relatively new winery in Argentina with its first wines produced in 2003.

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The makers of Alamos Wine: Catena Zapata

The Catena Family: An Argentine Tradition

An Argentine wine institution, Catena Zapata is one of the most important wineries in Mendoza. The Catena family includes four generations of winemakers and was one of the earliest to make wine in Argentina, planting their first Malbec vines in 1902.

Catena Zapata winery

The architecture of the winery is one of the most unique in Mendoza. The building is pyramid-shaped and was inspired by Mayan architecture. Although the building is certainly interesting to look at and the view is nice from the top, it wasn't built as much with function in mind unlike wineries like O. Fournier which has fused beautiful architecture with function.

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Hacienda del Plata: a winery representing Argentina

Perhaps one of the wineries in Mendoza that best encapsulates the gaucho image and lifestyle of Argentina is Hacienda del Plata. The winery actually grew out of the ranching lifestyle: its parent company a famous grain grower in Cordoba, Argentina. In 1999, the company started the winery, and all of its wines have names related to the ranching industry: Zagal (the name for a young man who works on a ranch), Arrieros (named after an older cattle driver), Mayoral (the boss of the ranch), and Cumbre (the summit, in this case the Andes).

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