A few days later at Bodegas Humberto Canale, in Rio Negro, Patagonia, we met winemaker Horacio Bibiloni, who made the fantastic Nieto's Senetir 2000 Bonarda -- before he started at Humberto Canale.
The atmosphere is informal and friendly, the cellars are clean, and you may well meet the winemakers.
Often they are the tales of ardent fans, and when the story gets to the part about meeting the winemaker, as such stories always seem to do, the sommelier will blush like a sixth grader who has Justin Bieber's autograph on her backpack.
Instead, he wrote of the joy and pleasures of consuming good wine, of the winemakers he met and the places he visited.
The winemakers I met on my recent safari into the Land of Hasselhoff seemed well chuffed with the profile boost brought by the World Cup and one such happy chappy is Gerhard Gutzler of Weingut Gutzler in the Rheinhessen.
In addition to a preponderance of women winemakers, I met another woman, a lawyer Paula Pivel from Alto de la Ballena travelling with her vitner husband Alvaro Lorenzo.
Nearly every Istrian winemaker I met also produces olive oil for sale.
He interrupts his lecture to meet with Burgundian winemakers he respects, like Christophe Roumier and Dominique Lafon.
Along the way, we check into Panama City's hottest hotels, meet the young winemakers who are putting California's Central Coast on the map and take the pulse in Montreal's hippest neighborhood.
"I think Randall Grahm is the smartest winemaker I've ever met," said Jim Clendenen, a fellow larger-than-life California winemaker who owns Au Bon Climat in Santa Barbara County.
