Two Beers and a Pretzel

The city of Bento Gonçalves, the hub of Brazil’s wine country, is about 2 hours Northwest of Gramado by car.  The surrounding hillsides are a kind of mix between Tuscany and Napa.  This region is reputedly the second best place in the world for the champagne grape.  Of course, since this isn’t France, they have to call it Brut.

The morning of the 24th I was a little stuffed up from the air conditioning back in the hotel, and my ears completely failed to pop as we descended from the high hill country into the valley.  Additionally, I had a pretty painful headache that I assume was related to all the sunburn I had acquired yesterday.  My scalp was actually blistering.  Of course, I left all the decongestants and pain killers back at the hotel.  It was a painful day, but not enough to stop me from sampling some vino.

The roads down to Bento were great.  My uncle commented that these twisty mountain roads would be fun in my car.  Granted, we’d have to be driving about 3x faster than 60 km/h, but It really made me miss my car.  I would have gotten about 30 speeding tickets.

This brings to light a few interesting facts about driving in Brazil.  There are speed bumps everywhere preventing what I would consider to be an ideal driving speed (roughly 120 mph).  They also have well marked photo-radar speed check stations every few miles that will automatically send a ticket to the registered owner of the car.  Similar to the USA, you get points for tickets, and after about 12 or so, you lose the right to drive.  Unlike the USA, you can simply say that you were not the driver, and get the “actual” driver to agree and assume the points and the penalty.  Many men’s wives have no idea how close they are to losing their license.  This has also sparked a cottage industry where people of legal age who do not actually own cars or drive will get their license, advertise in the paper, and sell you their driving points.  Similarly, if you own a business with a fleet of cars, you can simply apply your points to any of the cars in the fleet.  If you get too close to the point limit on your existing fleet, the company mysteriously acquires more vehicles.  In spite of this ingenious way of dealing with speeding tickets, there are not really highways in the sense that most US citizens picture…  more like a lot of state routes with many intersections and speed bumps, so real excessive speed is not a viable option – not that I would ever do that

OK back to the wine…

We started at the large vineyard in the photo.  MIOLO is an established winemaker that came to this valley about a decade ago.  We toured the vineyard and cellars with an English speaking guide, then proceeded on to the tasting.

Wine aging in American and French barrels…

Champagne racks…

We tasted about 8 wines here even though the tour package was only supposed to include 5. The red’s were decent, but a little bland for my taste.  Not quite up to par with Italy or California in my opinion.  It may be a little too wet in this region to pull really complex flavors out of the grapes.  The white’s were better, although I’m not much of a white wine drinker.  The champagne was another story.  I usually don’t like champagne, but this was really good.

The tasting was R$15 (about $6 USD), and they let you use the entry ticket as a coupon for the same value in the shop on the way out.

We moved on to another vineyard that shuffled us around between existing appointments, but we ended up skipping out of there to the Villa Valduga vineyard.  The winery has been around since 1875, so I believe it’s the oldest in the valley.  Oddly, they said that they mow down and replant the vines every 12 years.  My headache was in full effect, so I didn’t take many pictures of the grounds, although the peacocks made me get the camera out.

We took another tour of this winery and the cellars.

By the end of the tour, I was feeling much better – just in time for another tasting…

This place had great wine – I even liked the red’s.  The Cabernet Sauvignon was tasty, as was the Merlot.  Cabernet Franc was so-so; I was too wowed by the Franc back in Cali at Chateau St Jean to really give this one a good rating, but it was better than at Miolo.  Here, they actually had a Gewürztraminer that was good, and the white’s were all very good.  Their Chardonnay almost converted me to white wine, and the Champagne was some of the best I’ve ever had (apparently it won an award in France).  The server even had us try their 15 year Brandy (pretty good).  I asked why they had Brandy, but not Port, and he went behind the counter and opened a very tasty bottle.  When I get home, I’m going to look for their wine in local shops.

The price was also R$15 per person, but rather than a discount on purchases, they included some monster sized wine glasses with engraved Valduga logos.

After the tasting, we went for a quick dinner at a hotel where we talked with one of the outgoing chef’s in the lobby, but I was not feeling well again, so I didn’t eat too much.  However, the hotel had a heck of a view over the valley.

The drive home was equally as uncomfortable as the drive there until we arrived at our hotel and I downed an Alleve and fell asleep.

Here’s a nifty new trick…  I’ve added a GEO Mashup mod to my blog so that I can link posts to a location and give you a google map of where I am.  There’s also a map on the “Sean’s Maps” page that shows my route, and has stick-pins at the locations where posts were geo-tagged.