[CARMELO, URUGUAY] — Along the cool banks of the muddy Rio de la Plata is the wine region of Carmelo, Uruguay’s top wine region. All the best Uruguayan vintners are here, including Finca Narbona. Restored to turn of the century newness, Narbona Wine Lodge is like a museum of the past, with antiques, buildings and charm that dates back over a century.  With only and handful of rooms nestled right up along the vines, you feel like you’re staying in a period movie. The rooms are huge. The service minimal. The quiet is deafening. What a great place to relax, eat and take in the cool air of the wine region. It’s a Tablet Hotels and Relais & Chateaux property, so you know it’s good. And so’s the food on the quaint restaurant — one of the best in the region. Here’s a great article on Carmelo in Travel & Leisure. And here’s a perfect summary of the area in the New York Times.

When you first get to Carmelo, the scenery shifts from rolling farmland to alleys of gorgeous cypress trees that look more like Louisiana than Napa.

this glorious stretch of cypress trees along the main highway outside Carmelo. Each time I drove thru this grove, I had to get out and take another hundred pics.

Yeah, you need to look for this talented little Tannat. Finca Narbona Luz de Luna. Yumski. Buy it and drink it. Or better, go to Uruguay and stay at this pretty little hotel overlooking the vines, amidst the gentle rolling Uruguayan hills and a only a couple of kms from the undulating mud carpet that is the Rio de la Plata. It’s an easy ferry ride from Buenos Aires.

You don’t hear much about the great wines from Uruguay. Nor the remarkable, unending estancias. Nor the amazing beaches. Or the killer beef. I think they do that on purpose, keeping it all to themselves… Hiding gems like the lovely but persnickety Tannat wines that grow so abundantly rich here, yet few other places. And even this amazing room at the Narbona Wine Lodge, in a building from the turn of the century, where a scented breeze wafts over the vines and then your bed…greeting you each morning and beckoning you back for a nap in the afternoon.

Swimming place. Swim amidst the vines.

The rooms are huge. Some modern and others museum-like, with vintage everything. I mean, you feel like you are literally living in 1903

I think there must be a rule or something somewhere that if you have a winery, you must have a cool old delivery truck lying around.

I just loved sitting out here. When I see awesome B&W tile like this, I feel like getting down and rolling around on it like a Labrador in a good smelling patch of grass.

Napping place.

Bathing place.

This guy had the right idea, darting between the sunbeams like a slalom course.

Beamy

To get to Carmelo, you can take the fast ferry from Buenos Aires to Colonia. From there rent a car and it’s a beautiful forty minute drive.