Fact file
Brazilian vineyards First planted in 1532 Vineyard area 76,000ha Production Wine exports worth $15m (£ 11.4m)
Fine wine regions
Serra Gaúcha, Campanha, Serra do
Sudeste, Campos de Cima da Serra, Planalto Catarinense, Vale do São Francisco,
Serra da Mantiqueira the best to visit, in my opinion. At Miolo (www.miolo.com.br), a modern winery surrounded by rolling vineyards awaits, with extensive tastings to give you an overview of Serra Gaúcha and beyond. Lidio Carraro (www. lidiocarraro.com/ br) offers a more intimate family perspective on the local wine business and a tasting of wines from Vale dos Vinhedos and Serra do Sudeste. At Cave Geisse (www. familiageisse.com.br) you can discover the star quality of Brazilian sparkling wine as interpreted by Chilean winemaker Mario Geisse, who first came here in the 1970s when Champagne house Chandon hired him to kickstart Brazil’s sparkling wine revolution.
With a range of perspectives and spectrum of flavours, these three wineries offer a good starting point. But with more than 100 wineries open to the public in the thriving wine tourism scene, you could spend weeks exploring Serra Gaúcha – the bona fide heart and soul of Brazilian wine.
Planalto Catarinense: the original altitude frontier
Most people flock to Santa Catarina for the golden sands and white surf of Santa Catarina Island just off the coast, connected via the vibrant, cosmopolitan city of Florianópolis. It’s not a bad way to spend your holiday, between dreamy seashores and sultry beach bars.
But if you venture just three hours inland here, you’ll arrive at the stunning forests, canyons and waterfalls of the Serra Catarinense mountain range, also known as the Planalto Catarinense.
With mountain peaks scaling 1,800m and more, this is one of the coldest regions in
Brazil and one of the few that sometimes experiences snow in winter. It was for these cool temperatures that many Japanese immigrants made their way here in the 1970s looking for locations to plant apple trees. Fast forward a few decades, and the Planalto Catarinense has proved to be the top terroir in Brazil not only for apple-growing but for grape-growing too. The cooler temperatures, longer growing season, poor soils and lower rainfall at these heights offer fresher, more deeply coloured and concentrated wines in comparison to those made further south in
Rio Grande do Sul. In fact, it can get so cold here that this is the home of Brazil’s one and only ice wine – first made in the cold winter of 2009 by Pericó.
To get to grips with the new mountain wines of Serra Catarina, a good place to start is
Guaspari, Espírito Santo do Pinhal
coffee plants drawing in some of the country’s most sophisticated crowds for long weekends of imbibing in the Serra da Mantiqueira; rather it’s the growing wine route.
The foothills have become increasingly carpeted by vines and the wines of this mountain range are making waves in Brazil’s buzzing wine scene. Although much of the state of São Paulo and neighbouring Minas Gerais are too hot and tropical for decent wine production, the high-altitude slopes of the Mantiqueira Mountains offer cooler temperatures and have become home to Brazil’s highest altitude vineyards.
Visit Entre Vilas (www.entrevilas.com.br), where Rodrigo Veraldi, a slow-food enthusiast and avid fruit grower, has one of Brazil’s highest altitude vineyards – at 1,600m – along with a restaurant and wine lodge. To mitigate the effect of the heavy summer rains, he pioneered the umbrella technique, erecting large plastic tunnels above the vines. These wine umbrellas enable healthy conditions for grape-growing, and his success has led to a boom in juicy, fragrant, light red and white wines in the region, with several other growers copying him.
It’s a different viticultural innovation, though, that’s leading the wine renaissance in Serra da Mantiqueira: the winter harvest. By double pruning, producers move the vine’s growth cycle so that harvest comes in the dry, sunny and cool winter rather than the hot, humid summer.
Some of the main disciples of winter harvest wines have beautiful estates that you can visit to taste the fruits of their labour. From the homely welcome and outdoor tasting terrace at Casa Verrone (www.casaverrone.com. br) to the live music lounge and restaurant at Villa Santa Maria (see above), and the rolling estate and colonial mansion of Guaspari (www. vinicolaguaspari.com.br), there are plenty of wineries to pass through in Serra da Mantiqueira. The region is best enjoyed during the winter, with its sunny, balmy days and cool, starry nights.
DAmanda Barnes is an award-winning wine writer and a regular contributor to Decanter, publishing her work at www. southamericawineguide.com