Fiesta Nacional de la Vendimia

Since 1936, Mendoza has marked the end of its grape harvest with what has grown into the largest wine celebration in the Americas — the Fiesta Nacional de la Vendimia. Held each year in the first week of March, the festival draws on traditions dating back even further, to the 17th century, when Mendoza's earliest winemaking communities first celebrated the season's harvest.

Each of Mendoza's 19 departments prepares its own contribution throughout the early months of the year, with the celebrations culminating in a spectacular open-air theatre performance combining dance, theatre and visual effects, watched by around half a million people over the course of the week. The Vía Blanca de las Reinas, a nighttime parade of grape-and-flower-adorned floats, carries each department's chosen queen through Mendoza's streets, building toward the crowning of the National Vendimia Queen — a moment that has become the festival's defining symbol.

National Geographic once ranked Mendoza's Vendimia second among the world's great harvest festivals, behind only the Thanksgiving celebrations at Plymouth Plantation. For a country whose wine industry has become genuinely globally significant, the festival remains, at its heart, a tribute to the vineyard workers whose labour makes that industry possible.