Paula Maia's Wine blog

Casa Valduga was one of the first Brazilian wineries to make sparkling wines in the method champenoise. The Valduga family arrived in Bento Goncalves in the late 19th Century and soon begun planting the first vineyards in the valley. Today it has the biggest sparkling wine cellar in Latin America, and it is still run by the family.

I wasn’t going to visit Casa Valduga at first. I focus on wineries of small-medium production that eventually will be showcased in my wine bar. Recognizing that it would have been silly to miss out on this opportunity, we ended up spending an entire morning in their gigantic complex. There was a film, a tour, a tasting, the whole shebang, and it was worth it.

It is not by chance that Casa Valduga is a symbol of excellence in Brazil. Nor a coincidence that it is the official winery in the Planalto. Their wines are indeed excellent and their top tier sparkling have fooled even the French. Therefore, all the medals and awards worldwide.           Go Brazil!

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Summer in Brazil is what any normal human being dreams of. Lucky for me, I can always go home in the summer and experience household names such as Carnival, Ipanema, Caipirinha, Samba, and much more. More happens to be WINE, of course. Brazil has been making wine since the 1600′s and is now a solid producer of beautiful Sparkling wines. One of the most important wine region in Brazil is the Vale dos Vinhedos, in Bento Goncalves, located less than 200km north of Porto Alegre.

Settled around 1875 by Italian immigrants who came mostly from the Trento and the Veneto regions, the valley has a range of features that distinguishes it from all the other regions. Up in the mountains, it is surrounded by the towns of Bento Gonçalves – Brazilian Capital of Wine, Garibaldi – National Capital of Sparkling Wine and Monte Belo do Sul, known for its  stunning natural landscape that changes in each season.

We spent a long weekend visiting the most prominent wineries of the valley, including Miolo, Casa Valduga and the prestigious, but small, Cave de Amadeu. On my next posts I will feature these wineries alone, while here I am posting impressions of the valley in general and other places of interest we visited in the area.

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As crazy as it sounds, after being to 7 wine regions, we headed straight to Munich in time to catch the Oktoberfest. The funny thing is that the Oktoberfest is actually in September. What happens is the weather is so bad in October that they started to push it back until it stayed in September, when the weather is still bad, but better than in October.

It was my first real Oktoberfest, but being from the South of Brazil, where the 2nd largest Oktoberfest outside Munich happens, the original one didn’t impress me as much as my proud German husband wish it did. About 100km north of Porto Alegre- where I hail from- there is a great deal of Germans immigrants. That is in Novo Hamburgo, Sao Leopoldo, Gramado, Canela, Bento Goncalves, just to name a few. Today you can still hear amongst themselves a dialect, so old that my husband hardly understands it.

In my next Oktoberfest, I will make sure to park in the Sekt Tent as opposed to a sought after Beer Tent. It’s almost shameful to deny the importance of the liquid gold and its national supremacy, but there’s only so much I can drink of it. Now, wine is a different story and a mass- or a keg rather- will do me good. Did I have fun? Of course, I just wish I was as drunk as everyone else.

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