A Wine Festival in Vale dos Vinhedos
Finally, we awoke to some sun. It was time to leave Gramado. The better weather let us appreciate just how hilly this town was — it brought back rather unpleasant flashbacks of Sucre, Quito, and even Ciudad del Este. All those times we’d driven down roads and wished we hadn’t afterwards. We ignored Google's terrible "eco" route and stuck firmly to the main road: no morning drama, thank you.
We had realised with our imminent border crossing that we had forgotten to vaccinate the cats. So the first thing we did after leaving Gramado was pick a vet along the way. We had now ticked off all the points of interest we had marked and were basically heading to the border, around ten hours away. We knew, however, that we were about to pass through Brazil's wine region, and so far we hadn’t found much nice wine. That didn’t seem right, so we hoped to visit a vineyard and try some better ones.
There were several possible options marked around the town of Bento Gonçalves, so this is where we headed for a vet. After a bit of searching, we found one which may or may not have been open. While it was totally shut, the shutters weren’t down, so we went to knock on the door, and soon enough they let us in. We agreed to get both the cats all their vaccines at once, which would be a lot easier than trying to remember four different dates.
We brought them through, wiggling in protest, to the treatment room. In a matter of minutes, it was all done and the vet set about writing up the paperwork. I casually asked if she could date them for about a week prior. We have been known to have a few memory lapses regarding their vaccines, and so far the vets had all shrugged and asked us what date we wanted them to put down. This one was a lot more rule-abiding, however. She looked me straight in the eye and very disapprovingly told me no. Fortunately, it didn’t really matter — for as far as she was sticking to the rules, we were more than happy to completely ignore them. We had already decided to cross at an free border and smuggle them in anyway.
After we had sorted the girls, we headed to an enormous electrical shop where I bought some more cable to permanently install our new fridge socket. Right now, it stuck awkwardly out of a cupboard at the back, as my existing wire wasn’t good enough to power it all the way to the front. With the boring day-to-day under control, we headed out in search of wine places.
Lee had found a spot to stop directly in the Vale dos Vinhedos (Valley of the Vineyards), and that sounded perfect. Tomorrow, we’d probably pick one of the local spots to go and have a tasting. The aforementioned spot was directly outside a little church in this pretty valley. You leave behind the main town, dropping steeply downhill into the valley. Soon, the tarmac is replaced by a cobbled road, and many, many vineyards appear all along the route. After a few kilometres, you get to this church. It seems that people just park up on the grass outside, and it’s fine. When we got there, however, there wasn’t really any space; a big truck was blocking a lot of the way. A sign hung from a tree declaring that on the 26th–28th of March, there would be a wine festival. The best part? Today was the 24th. To add to how well this was turning out, we found a great spot to camp a little way down the side road. This huge open space was empty aside from one truck. The house opposite was abandoned, and we couldn’t see any reason at all why we couldn’t just camp right there. So we did exactly that.
As we had one day before the wine festival started, we spent the day in our new spot doing a bit of admin. It was clearly going to be the car park for the wine festival, as throughout the day truckloads of gravel arrived while a small JCB spread it around. They were completely unconcerned by our presence, though, and as the bit we were already parked on was solid ground rather than the recently turned-over mud section, there was no need for them to move us to the gravel.
In the afternoon, another camper arrived, parking briefly a little way away from us. At least we thought they were a camper — they had a sticker on the side offering wine tours, but then what looked like a solar panel on the roof. They stayed for a bit, but then drove off towards the end of the evening. We decided we’d head out for a drink at a nearby bar. It was called Bar Bacon Honky Tonk, and after visiting several of the famous honky-tonk bars in America some years back, we were interested in a Brazilian take on the whole thing. It wasn’t far to walk, so we left Ruby set up and set off on foot.
The bar entrance was definitely giving off American vibes: the sheriff's car, the signs, the lot.
We walked up to the entrance, where we were greeted by several ladies in long, slinky black dresses. They looked more like the kind of hosts you might find for an exclusive nightclub rather than a slightly tacky American-themed bar. We felt a little underdressed all of a sudden. Then we saw that the live music was being belted out by someone dressed up as Elvis, and we felt better.
As we asked for a table, another lady came over and spoke to us. It turned out this was the owner of the camper that had been in the field that afternoon. She introduced herself as Mônica. She was Brazilian, but spoke great English and invited us to come and sit with her. She told us that she went around speaking to local vineyards and arranging events. Drinking wine to her was market research. We spent a little while chatting while we ordered a pizza and had a couple of beers. She was, of course, here for the wine festival tomorrow and was planning to camp in the field with us. Conveniently, that meant we got a free taxi home!
The following morning, the car park began filling early. The parking attendants told us that we didn’t need to move, however — they just packed everyone in around us. Just before midday, we went over to the field. We had hoped it would be like our favourite wine festival in France. There, you just pay for a tasting glass, and then you go round and round getting free samples. Last time, I ended up comprehensively plastered, running around a deserted car park, butt-naked in a storm (don't ask). While we didn’t need to reach that level of inebriation, a few free samples would definitely be good.
We were optimistic when we saw that there was no entrance fee; you just had to buy a plastic glass. Here, we realised the problem: the card machine would not accept our cards — any of them. In the end, we paid cash and hoped that this was just a one-off. We wandered around to look at the options. Trestle tables were set up all down the side of the field. Each winery had its own table and selection of wines on show. Unfortunately, they weren’t free. In fact, it was quite pricey.
We bought a glass of a nice red and then came across the same problem. The card machines here were all from the same bank, Sicredi as they were the event sponsors. It appeared that this bank did not accept foreign cards. This is literally a first. Occasionally we’ve had machines that will only take Visa, not Mastercard, and lots of problems with transactions being processed as credit even when it’s debit. But very, very rarely have we just been completely unable to pay. This was pretty rubbish, as we didn’t have much cash on us, and going into town to get cash was a pain in the arse, too. As this bank was the sponsor, every single vendor was using their machines. It was crazy that I could use my card to buy a can of beer on the beach from a guy with a polystyrene box, but some fancy wine festival was a no-go. In the end, we didn’t get to sample all that many due to this problem. We did find the one vendor who had brought a different card machine, so we ended up drinking mainly their wine.
We used the remainder of our cash to buy some food — best not to have too many bottles without eating! We also caught up with Monica for a bit.
Then we spent our day enjoying the sun and slowly pickling ourselves. We got lucky at one point when they did some kind of parade. We didn’t exactly understand what was going on, but they had a tractor pulling a trailer full of people around the field. The people in the trailer all had small barrels of their wine and were giving out generous free samples, so we got right in there for some freebies.
As the day wore on, we headed out to another bar nearby. We decided to mix up the wine drinking with some beer and food. We bought some little fried snacks from a guy outside the bar; he told us very proudly that his mum made them and was delighted when we devoured the lot and came back for more.
The guy in the bar was also very accommodating, giving us a nice big chunk of cashback when we bought a few beers. This was perfect, as we could at least enjoy a bit more of the festival. We headed back inside, bought a nice bottle of Merlot, and spent the rest of the evening dancing to their live music. They had some really great bands playing classic golden oldies that everyone could dance to. We had a really great evening in the end and felt we had now done Brazil’s wine region justice.
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