Garzón train station is in a partially abandoned Uruguayan village, some 145km east of the capital Montevideo, where some still enjoy a rural existence amid the plains of stray cows and wandering armadillos. The terminal has a crumbling, dilapidated and yet defiantly charming glory.
Over the past decade, something strange has happened: its abandoned houses have opened up as upmarket restaurants, wine bars and art galleries. Jet-setters from around the world have started arriving, enchanted by its unpaved streets and the nostalgia of time.
“I fell in love with the town because I thought it had an incredible foundation,” explains Argentine chef Francis Mallmann , who is often credited with spearheading Garzón’s renaissance. “You have these wide streets, this beautiful plaza, and simple, beautiful architecture.” In 2003, Mallmann moved from the sweltering Atlantic to Garzón’s drier interior, opening a restaurant on the edge of its palm-fringed plaza (and raising eyebrows among his skeptical peers).
“We had a huge impact as soon as we opened,” Mallmann says of Garzon Restaurant . Many foreigners began buying land, and soon the streets were fixed up and the city saw some of its first improvements.
Just as Mallmann galloped into town, so did the Argentinian Alejandro Bulgheroni , who surveyed the granitic soils of the surrounding hills and saw visions of Tuscany. In the mid-2000s, he transformed Garzón into a new 524-hectare wine region.
In addition to tastings, visitors to Bodega Garzón can also rub shoulders with powerful players from neighboring countries Argentina and Brazil in the private Club House, play rounds at the Tajamares golf club, or enjoy a more elaborate dinner by Mallmann at the hotel restaurant (the two joined forces in 2014).
However, just as appealing as Bodega Garzón are the boutique wineries popping up in the city, including Compañía Uruguaya de Vinos de Mar , which opened a small restaurant and wine bar this January. Run by Michelini i Mufatto (a family business with wineries in Mendoza, Argentina, and Bierzo, Spain), it offers Uruguayan tapas paired with what it calls “transcendent wines.”
Mallmann's small, five-room hotel, housed in a large brick building that once held a general store, used to be the only game in town. Now, you'll find rustic-chic vacation homes and luxurious boutique properties like the Six-Suite LUZ Culinary Wine Lodge, which opened last November.
The annual Campo Artfest , its main event, brings together three dozen artists, turning it into a carnival of creativity. Last year, for example, the Argentine conceptual artist Leandro Erlich installed an absurd traffic light on Avenida Garzón with eternally lit red and green signals.
Artfest takes place in late December, just before Este Arte , an up-and-coming art fair in the nearby resort town of Punta del Este, and the José Ignacio International Film Festival , which features outdoor screenings at the Garzón train station.
Among the new exhibition spaces, we find Walden Naturae , an ambitious project by Ricardo Ocampo , trendsetter behind the contemporary art space Waldengallery in Buenos Aires.
Just beyond the town limits, we find the sculpture park of Uruguayan visual artist Pablo Atchugarry . Atchugarry's monolithic abstract art shares the hillside space with works by German sculptor Peter Schwickerath and American Land Art pioneer Alan Sonfist.
Source: Financial Times
