Cafayate Wine Trail Excursion

If you want to taste and learn about Cafayates good wines, this is not the trip. The wine museum was closed. We were told that it was always at this time. The orientation on the one vineyard had begun when we arrived, and the guidance was only in Spanish. Wine tasting of only table wine, not their best. The second vineyard barely made wine. No offer of lunch at any of the vineyards. The guide knew a lot about geology and archaeology, but was not interested in wine. On the way home, only Spanish was spoken.

I wish I had listened to Steve H’s review below. While it may seem like an outlier experience, ours was almost identical. The only reason this is getting one star is for Pamela and the natural beauty of the landscapes viewed during the drive from Salta to Cafayete. This was advertised incorrectly. It is primarily a landscape viewing tour with VERY brief stops at 2 wineries and a wine museum. We sat on a bus most of the tour and were given an unclear agenda for the day despite multiple attempts asking for at least a rough timeline (e.g., drive time, time spent at each planned stop, time allotted for lunch and lunch location). What was meant to be a 10 hour tour turned into 13 because we had to pick up new guests along the way, with their pick up time continuing to change throughout the day as well. As a result, we were rushed through our first winery stop, had an abbreviated stop at the second winery, and were encouraged to “have a quick lunch - like an empanada”. In lieu of having lunch on the go, we opted to skip the wine museum (a planned stop we paid for as part of this overall tour), have a proper lunch and see a bit of the town of Cafayete (stretch our legs after being on the bus for several hours). Additionally, after being given a 45 minute break for lunch and a stressed meet up time to drive to the second winery, the bus was 30 minutes late causing us to miss out on additional time we could have enjoyed Cafayete or even gone to the museum if the full available time was communicated. Overall lack of organization and communication between the tour company, tour guides, and to the guests. The first winery we stopped at was disorganized and rushed. The staff and family who owned the winery were kind and polite. If you want to have a true Cafayete winery experience- this is not the tour for you. Pamela did do her best to get us back to our dinner reservation, which we made prior to knowing the 10 hour tour would turn into 13.

Landscape from Salta to Cafayate was very scenic, an unexpected part of the tour. Learned a lot about wine production in Cafayate.

The experience was great. Starting with the driver Enzo and the guide Eva who put all the fun into the trip, the landscapes are beautiful, several stops are made to see the most attractive landscapes along the way, the first winery we visited is beautiful FINCA EL RECREO, the guide is very willing , the tour is well explained and the tasting is enjoyable, they offer you 2 glasses of good wines and you can pay reasonable prices to taste more, WE LOVE wine and its stories, you can see the dedication and detail they put into it; unlike the second winery visited. We had lunch at Pusk'no bistro (not part of the tour) where the price and quality are consistent, the Malbec tenderloin delicious. We had a mini problem of not being able to enter the wine museum but the agency solved it perfectly...all highly recommended, we will definitely return

First, let me start with the positive: 1. Pamela (the tour guide) 2. Breathtaking scenery Outside of these, the tour was poor. I'll outline the highlights below: 1. Poor organization: Throughout this tour, we learned a lot about how this agency works. They have multiple tour itineraries on various sites through which they collect customers and aggregate them altogether on the same tour bus. They then freelance out tour guides, who are not given logistical details about the various tours until the day of. The result was chaos. There were 4 different groups of tourists (~20 people) with different itineraries and amenities as part of their tour package. There was an incredible amount of wasted time, which lead to an extremely delayed ~15 hour tour (7am pick up, 21:30 drop off). For example, we had ~5-6 stops to view the scenery on the way from Salta to Cafayate. It was absolutely beautiful; however, for some inexplicable reason, the tour organizer decided it appropriate to pick up a new group of tourists in Cafayate who were on a similar but reversed schedule. This meant that for the 95% of us that started the experience in Salta, we were taken to the same exact spots that we'd previously stopped on the first leg of the trip. Most of us stayed on the tour bus tired after a long day of touring, waiting for this new group of individuals to take pictures and explore around the stops -- which must have made them uncomfortable too. This is just one example of the bloat, not to mention the additional time wasted to drop multiple groups of 3 or 4 off at a destination particular to their experience, but not ours, etc. The only explanation I can give come up with is to grab more cash, which leads to my second takeaway: 2. Not worth the money: This was by all means an expensive tour. It was ~$85 USD per person, which can take you far in Argentina. For this price, we expected a much more intimate tour -- not to be crammed onto a full length tour bus and taken around to multiple destinations that were irrelevant to our itinerary. Honestly, the wine portion of the tour didn't offer what we'd expected either. We were taken to low quality touristy wineries, where we were taken to Spanish-only tours (though thankfully despite being caught off guard, Pamela saved the day in a pinch doing her best to translate among professional industry vocabulary that she was unfamiliar with). In the first winery, we were charged an additional fee for tasting 4 wines. In the second, we tasted 2 wines as part of the tour. Keep in mind that these were tastings and not full glasses. The wines and wineries overall were of poor quality and, given the fact that our tour guide came away with a free gift set from the first winery (the same place where we were unexpectedly upcharged to participate in the tasting), which makes me believe that the agency behind this tour is not acting in the best interest of the tour participants and instead choosing places where they get kickbacks. Out of our ~15 hour chaotic tour, only ~45 minutes were spent on the actual grounds of wineries, which made me question the value of a tour that markets itself (and charges) as a premier experience. Anyway, I was nervous coming into this tour with only 5 reviews. I ultimately decided to choose it because there were few other options on Viator and this seemed to be one of the only wine-focused tours. I would've been more than happy to pay the premium had this been a premier experience; but instead it was anything but. Lesson learned. Look on other platforms and stay away from this organizing agency at all cost. Doing nothing would be better than this experience. Two stars only because of the natural scenery and out of kindness to our tour guide and driver. Would give negative stars to the agency if possible.