Mendoza, Argentina

Casa de Uco

Price per night from$467.50

Price information

If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.

Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (USD467.50), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

Style

Bucolic bacchanalia

Setting

Vine-clad valley

We’ll raise a cheers to Casa de Uco wine resort’s full-wall panoramas any day: vines stretching improbably far, frosted Andean peaks – Mendoza’s majesty takes top billing here. The hotel’s man-made assets are equally impressive: eco-friendly industrial architecture puts a bold spin on the rural hideaway, high-calibre Malbec and its contemporaries are plentiful, and justified pride is taken in the estate-grown cuisine. Bold, playful and refined: Casa de Uco’s is a pleasing bouquet indeed.

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A wine-tasting with the hotel's sommelier for two

Facilities

Photos Casa de Uco facilities

Need to know

Rooms

19, including nine suites and three private villas.

Check–Out

Noon, but flexible, subject to availability (charged at 50 per cent of the room rate). Earliest check-in, 3pm.

Prices

Double rooms from £370.27 ($468).

More details

Rates usually include à la carte breakfast and some non-alcoholic drinks.

Also

In the games room guests can play pool and computer games, and flip through the large coffee-table book collection.

At the hotel

Winery, spa, sauna, steam room, exercise room, tennis court, playroom, free WiFi, bikes to borrow. In rooms: a 42” flatscreen TV, free bottle of wine, regional snack, Nespresso coffee machine, non-alcoholic drinks, bathrobes and slippers.

Our favourite rooms

The lagoon-facing rooms on the top floor have a glass frontage for full-on scenery. There’s a private balcony too, and the sleek modern bath tubs (they’ll fit two if you don’t mind a close encounter) are right by the floor-to-ceiling windowpane. There’s a curtain if you’re feeling shy. The concrete-and-steel Bungalows look like villas from the future, with Corbusier-esque clean-cut modernism and rooftop Jacuzzis.

Poolside

The unheated outdoor pool looms over the lagoon on a concrete platform. The hotel sits along one side and sunloungers are scattered about, but swim to the infinity edge and you’re immersed in timeless Mendocenean terroir. It’s large enough for lazy laps, and a Jacuzzi bubbles away to one side.

Spa

The minimalist mod spa offers vinotherapy and hydrotherapy treatments. There's an aromatic cedar sauna and wet sauna, steam room and relaxation area. There's a fitness centre too and an open-air Jacuzzi and solarium.

Packing tips

A star chart so you can impress your partner when peeking through the top-floor telescope.

Also

The hotel’s common areas are wheelchair friendly, and the ground-floor Cordón del Plata room has been adapted for mobility-impaired guests.

Children

Over-10s can stay, but most activities require ID, so it’s best to leave the kids at home.

Sustainability efforts

Low-energy equipment and solar panels are used throughout, and grass and wildflowers poke through the hotel’s ‘green roof’. The herbicide- and pesticide-free estate grows everything from Swiss chard to fava beans in the kitchen garden, and the central man-made lagoon (filled with run-off water from the Andes) is used for low-impact irrigation.

Food and Drink

Photos Casa de Uco food and drink

Top Table

Sit by any window and marvel at nature’s handiwork. For a quiet drink together, the upstairs lounge has fragrant candles, cosy throws and a telescope for stargazing.

Dress Code

There’s nothing but vines for miles around, so no one will bat an eyelid if you dine in that day’s riding gear (although try not to clash with the staff’s smart uniform of blue shirts and white jodhpurs).

Hotel restaurant

Produce is grown on the sizeable estate or neighbouring farms. Mod-Argentinean dishes by chef Juan Ignacio Perez Daldi are designed around hauls from the hotel’s garden, artfully finished with home-grown herbs, seeds and flowers. Contemporary with soft leather sofas and all tables set close to the huge windows, the restaurant’s outdoorsy hues, warm woods and pretty plants invite nature in.

Hotel bar

The sommelier has sipped his way through many a Malbec (among other wines) and his recommendations are duly reliable. Swap tasting notes with other guests in the sociable wine lounge. Alternatively, imagine you’re a nostalgic wine baron and wander through the hotel with your glass, stopping to gaze wistfully over your crop; summon a waiting staff member if you need a top-up. A wide wine spectrum is celebrated here, from chartreuse sauvignon to carmine pinot noir.

Last orders

Breakfast runs from 7am to 11am. Lunch is served from noon to 3pm and dinner from 7pm to 11pm.

Room service

The full menu is available during restaurant hours. If you need a late-night pick-me-up, a bartender will shake up a cocktail of your choosing and bring it straight to your door.

Location

Photos Casa de Uco location
Address
Casa de Uco
Route 94, kilometer 14.5, Road to Manzano Histórico
Tunuyán
Argentina

The hotel is on a lush green (auburn-hued come fall) vineyard estate in the desert of Uco Valley, just under two hours’ drive south of Mendoza. There’s a smattering of wineries close by and Andean foothills to climb.

Planes

The closest international hub is Governor Francisco Gabrielli Airport, a two-hour drive from the hotel. Aerolineas Argentinas (www.aerolineas.com.ar) runs frequent two-hour flights there from Buenos Aires and 45-minute flights from Santiago in Chile.

Automobiles

The hotel’s remote setting makes driving necessary, but you’ll be rewarded with emerald- or ochre-tinged views, depending on the time of year, and mighty mountain-topped vistas. From the airport, reach the hotel via National Route 40, Route 92 then Route 94. There’s an Avis booth at the airport, and free parking at the hotel.

Other

Make quite the entrance by sweeping in on a chopper – Casa de Uco has its own heliport. Contact the hotel team to make arrangements.

Worth getting out of bed for

Casa de Uco’s estate lends itself to simple pleasures: soaking in the pool, sipping a glass of wine or strolling through the vines. There are bikes to borrow for bombing through the vines, or you can hop on horseback – accompanied by a well-trained member of staff – for a peaceful trot through the surrounding wide-open spaces. Challenge your travel partner to a tennis match on the estate's courts, or try your hand at archery. A surfeit of wineries ensures that the Uco Valley’s cup runs over. Malbec and sémillon are the big names here, but diverse terroir yields some excellent Chardonnay, sauvignon blanc and pinot noir too. The Vines of Mendoza’s Uco Valley outpost, a 20-minute drive from the hotel, is said to be one of the best; here you can learn about the fermentation process, taste from the barrels, and blend your own wines, all with awe-inspiring Andean views. Bodegas Salentein, a 40-minute drive away, rivals the hotel for eye-catching modernist architecture, and its oak-barrel-aged wines aren’t half bad either. Guests whose sense of adventure stretches beyond their palate can hike the Andean foothills.

Reviews

Photos Casa de Uco reviews
Lucinda Paxton

Anonymous review

By Lucinda Paxton, Envy-inducing nomad

Knowing that there was to be a full supermoon, an excess of wine and sophisticated spa-and-bar opportunities, I’ll admit I was a little sceptical about writing this review. I worried it would read like one long minibreak cliché, and this was before I tumbled out of a magnificently-proportioned bed to pad around on a private balcony, which offered beautiful vineyard views on which the Andes loftily gazed (prompting wine-fuddled heads to remember that they were in South America, not the South of France). In essence, it was quite the perfect spot to don bathrobes and frolic in sozzled amor with Señor Smith – and a place to revel in clichés and much more…

Mendoza airport was shut until December, so the sole option for our first Argentine minibreak was the overnight bus – but in truth, I would have risked it anyway. It’s a snoozy direct route from Buenos Aires, and I was subconsciously testing Mr Smith’s hardcore-travelling-companion credentials. The reality is that Mendoza is not exactly hardcore; it is to Porteños what the Cotswolds are to Londoners for minibreaks – just 10 hours further away, with much better weather and wine. It was still quite testing; we survived – just – and if the wine-soaked embrace of Casa de Uco had not been waiting at the end, it might have been the end of us. So, one gold star to Casa de Uco.

While depleting my oversize glass of welcome wine, I relaxed into a languid lethargy and thought about taking a bottle (and, as an afterthought, Mr Smith) to the outdoor, Andes-ogling Jacuzzi – for why was the romantic minibreak invented, if not to revel in every amorous cliché under the sun? Thrillingly for us, at Casa de Uco, a great deal more… Opportunities for adventure abounded: archery and furious downhill mountain biking (at a finger-numbing three degrees) were on the agenda, as was our first bit of superbly organised fun: galloping through vineyards to a private asado (an Argentine barbecue). This was big-kid heaven, and Mr Smith and I were as much romanced by the surrounding nature as we were by each other.

As we drove down roads lined with fuzzy peach blossom and slender poplars, enchantingly far from the airport and the province’s capital, the grandeur of the snow-tipped Andes became our breathtaking backdrop. The resort itself stands cool in the centre of a 320-hectare, vineyard-lined estate, a dream for wine enthusiasts and an eco-ode to the land it inhabits.

This is definitely a lair for professional wine-lovers; I love wine, but I know nip-squeak about it. However, I heard on the grapevine that Uco has been tipped as the next Napa. I bandied this phrase around zealously for the duration of my stay, much to the embarrassment of Mr Smith, who is more informed – even more so since we downloaded a wine app that instantly made us obsess over labels, and irk every sommelier within a 10-mile radius. My novice quaffing skills were charmingly embraced, as was Mr Smith’s frantic snapping, and we were made to feel very much part of the pro-slurping set – because that’s exactly what Casa de Uco does: make you feel right at home.

Time seems to stretch in this house – I stayed still in a sauna for more than 10 minutes, a skill I’d never quite mastered before, and the ability to do so is one of my markers for maturity. So, Casa de Uco gets its second gold star for almost making me feel like an adult – emphasis on ‘almost’. The place does encourage one to behave badly, while playing at being grown-up. Stay in bathrobes all day while lazing in the inside-outside glory of your giant room, gazing at the vines or the supermoon; then rock up late for breakfast – we adored the relaxed mealtimes so in sync with our part Argy, part British, very neurotic timekeeping. You can have breakfast at 1pm and lunch at 4pm if you so wish, and we happily put this attractive marketing carrot to the test. Here is a place to get tipsy over cocktail-fuelled, very serious pool contests and then head down to the fire pit to smoke forbidden cigarettes and have staring contests with baby foxes; a place to wander through the vines at sunset; watch electric storms rage in Uco Valley’s mighty skies; and pontificate on the irrigation system which feeds such vast vineyards in such dry desert (Mr Smith) and if we could get a double spa treatment tomorrow (me). The answer to the latter, by the way, was yes.

Mr Smith fell in love with the snow-capped vistas, startlingly blue skies and adventure opportunities of the Uco Valley, and has suggested we come back with a car and a tent. I can foresee so many problems, but we’ve struck a deal, whereby we come back here for a post-camping holiday and I promise to sit still in a sauna and let him win at pool. Oh, and move in with him. So, thanks Casa de Uco for that too – you really did turn me into a grown-up.

 
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Price per night from $467.50