Bodega Benegas

This laboriously restored turn-of-the-century winery is noteworthy for its fabulous collection of antique ponchos, its gallery of heirloom winemaking machinery and its romantic family history. Owner Federico Benegas is a descendant of one of Mendoza's oldest winemaking families—a family that found itself compelled, as a result of an economic downturn that struck the region during the 1970s, to liquidate and sell off its holdings parcel by parcel. In 1999, Federico, who had left wine country to work in Buenos Aires, returned to his native Mendoza and purchased a vineyard originally planted by his great-grandfather, Don Tiburcio Benegas, patriarch of the Benegas clan and one of the Argentine wine industry's 19th-century visionaries. Today Benegas produces three lines, with the youngest "Estirpe" (or "lineage") wines named for favorite family characters.