Dia 127 - Friday April 15, 2011: Discovering Brazil’s Vale Dos Vinhedos (Wine Country)

We spent some time to effectively map our route to Posada Borghetto Sant’Anna. Google directions gave us a clear wrong address. To avoid hassles we had to stay alert to changes in the name or number for the same road and different reference towns on road signs. We noted the large number of “love hotels” along the route. We read an article about them in our last on-flight magazine. Once outside the urban center, the countryside became beautifully verdant mountains.

This slightly mountainous part of Brazil had many Italian and German immigrants. The valley where we are staying was settled by Italians who started to grow grapes to sell a little wine. The industry has started to take off internationally in the last ten years. The valley is so coming and beautiful that, it looks to me like a several “beautiful people” winery owners are building fantasy estates, just like in Napa.

The Posada is a series of little houses, each with 2 rooms overlooking the valley full of vineyards. Most of the downhill wall of our room opens onto the valley. We can hear roosters, hoof-beats and farm equipment along with the traffic. Lunch was at Casa Do Madeira. We had a beautiful unoaked chardonnay from the next-door winery (Casa Valduga) that tasted of its grape. This accompanied the daily menu of godorniz (game hen) braised with onions and wine. The side dishes were polenta with some of the onion sauce, home made pasta with fresh basil pesto, baby lettuce leaves and dessert. Carol had grapes cooked with tapioca and I had ice cream with sweet wine sauce. Molto bene! We visited 2 quality family vineyards & wineries. This area produces sparkling wines of note, as its soil is acidic. Pizzato Vinhas & Vinhos had an extremely interesting sparkling wine and tannat. Vincola Don Laurindo produced an excellent sparkling wine, chardonnay and a Malbec. Este lugar es muy amable.

Pardon my Espanol. The Brazilians have no trouble understanding my simple Spanish. English is not widely spoken here. Now I have to start learning Portuguese. I understand the written language as the spelling & grammar changes between the 2 related languages is not too great. I hope to hear and spell Portuguese better soon.

We were alerted that the recommended Restaurante Sbornea’s serves excellent and large amounts of food. That was an understatement. We stopped at about 8 types of filled crepes, about 9 types flavored rice, about 6 meats and 8 different desserts, mostly filled crepes. Not that there weren’t more types of everything that kept coming; we just couldn’t go on. We missed Justin. We did finish a bottle of tasty Calza Malbec. A good time was had!