Destination: BENTO GONCALVES, Brazil

Valley of the vineyards

Touring wineries in mountains of southern Brazil

A cool breeze brushes the valley and the hills riffle in silvers and blues. Beneath the stars, beneath the rising moon, the field hands are picking and plucking and harvesting the crop that is king of these highlands: grapes.

Grapewise, things are looking peachy this year in the Vale dos Vinhedos -- the Valley of the Vineyards. A big reason is Mama Natureza, or Mother Nature. She was good this year to this mountain region of southern Brazil: It didn't rain too little, it wasn't sunny too much, and temperatures hung steady all the grape-growing season.

You can sense the excitement in town -- in the shops, in the squares, on the street. Everyone's talking about the upcoming wine festivals. There will be cheese and wine and pasta and loads of barefoot people stomping grapes in cedar wine casks to the tune of an accordion player and the rhythm of clapping hands.

You can feel the excitement in the fields, too.

On a cobbled road along a ridge you can look across the valley and see the pickers working into the dusk like bees in a hive. Then you see the gray line of the treetops on the far mountain, the spire of a lonely church silhouetted against the trees. When you feel the lick of a fall wind on your brow and smell the sharp, smoky scent from the wood stoves of the stone cottages and hear the soft tinkling of cowbells in the fields, it does something to you.

Finally, the sky fills with chips that look sharp as diamonds and you start down the road on the way to your hotel. Suddenly comes the clopping of hooves and around a curve appears the silhouette of a large ox and a cart and the heads of a man and a boy. They have in tow a stack of square bins covered in a tarp.

"Hello!" the man shouts.

"Hello!"

The ox pulls up beside you, snorts and stops. The driver of the cart has a wide set of shoulders and a wide forehead, a handlebar mustache under a long nose, a square jaw ruddied by sun. His arms and hands and shirt and trousers are stained, but his smile is white as the moon.

"Going to Bento?"

"Yes."

"Got something for you." He swings around on his bench, yanks the tarp off the top bin, reaches in and pulls out a handful of grapes. They feel soft, warm in your hands.

"Well, aren't you going to eat any?"

You think about the muddy hands of the pickers, the less-than spotless bins and then you go ahead and pop one of the grapes into your mouth anyway. It is juicy, plump, rich.

"Wonderful."

"You won't get better than those," he says. "Isn't that right, Mario?" The boy nods, smiles, half embarrassed, and shrugs his shoulders.

"Staying long?"

"Just a night or two."

"You must stay longer for the festivals. Lots of wine and lots of ladies." He laughs. "Well, we have to get these back. I wish you a good stay. Good night!"

"Boa noite!"

You lose sight of the cart in the velvety dusk, then it hits you that you failed to introduce yourself or even ask the gentleman his name. Apparently there was no need. Apparently, in Brazil's wine country, names come a distant third to a friendly chat and a good grape.

* * *

It was Italians who founded Bento Goncalves more than a century ago in the spine of the Gaucho Range, a handsome, rugged sierra that runs across the northern brow of Rio Grande do Sul, the southernmost state in Brazil.

Lured by tales of cheap, fertile land, waves of Italian immigrants began arriving here more than 126 years ago, bringing with them their love of family, music, pasta, and -- naturally -- wine. They came on muleback, venturing some 70 miles north and west of the state capital, Porto Alegre, often needing to cut their own trails and build their own bridges as they ventured up into the hills.

When they found land fit for a vineyard, they put down stakes and erected houses of gray stone, mud, straw and clay. The less-fortunate took shelter from the cold, wet weather in alcoves dug underground and carved into the trunks and roots of massive trees.

By the turn of the 20th century, the colony was flourishing. Two-story houses, chapels, foundries, mills and general stores went up and in 1908, the "Smoky Mary" -- a coal-fired train -- began chugging wood-crafted products, clothing and farm produce between Bento Goncalves, Garibaldi and Carlos Barbosa, busy trading posts at the time.

The largest of the three towns, Bento Goncalves, is now a tidy, charming city of 100,000 inhabitants, yet it remains true to its Italian roots. The city is stuffed with wine stores, sweet shops, bakeries, pizzarias, beef and pasta joints and furniture outlets.

Architecturally, the city smartly blends the old with the new. On Marechal Deodoro, the main boulevard downtown, a Gothic, creme-colored church built nearly a century ago rises beside a new shopping mall with flying, white, steel buttresses and high, glass walls.

Granite- and marble-faced apartments rise between clumps of traditional homes and churches. The latter are hardly in short supply. For those who enjoy visits to Gothic churches, Bento Goncalves has the Igreja Matriz Santo Antonio, the Igreja Nossa Senhora Lourdes, the Igreja Sao Francisco, and, in the Square of Roses, the stunning Matriz Cristo Rei -- a sharp, angular structure with long, pointed stained glass and multiple spires. Crisp and sleek against a clear blue sky, it is grander than any castle Disney can offer.

The Museu do Imigrante -- Immigrant's Museum -- holds the town's past. Inside the restored, two-story building on Herny Hugo Dreher Street is an impressive montage of artwork, wagons, farm tools, photos and samples of clothing worn by the Italian pioneers.

Then there is the Colonia Sao Pedro.

There are 23 structures in the colony, just a 20-minute drive east of Bento Goncalves through the rolling, richly green hills. Along the Caminhos de Pedra, or "Paths of Stone," there is a malt-whisky distillery, a couple of roadside chapels, a flour mill, a blacksmith's shop, a hotel and a host of Venetian-style, stone dwellings. A few of the basalt structures are in need of repair. Many were restored, however, in the early '90s and are in fine condition, most notably the House of Stone of the Bertarello Family.

Built in 1877 and restored in 1994, the Bertarello house offers a hearty, sumptuous Italian lunch, complete with a starter of chicken-and-pasta Capelletti broth, homemade bread, sliced radish-and-mayonnaise salad, freshly baked cheese bread, spaghetti, barbecued chicken, boiled cabbage and a passion fruit custard. (It's not Italian in origin, but no one I ate with was complaining.)

To see the country, though, you don't need a car.

The Smoky Mary train line was fixed up and in 1993 again began taking passengers between Bento Goncalves and Carlos Barbosa. In the old days the benches were not padded with leather and there weren't any trumpet, accordion or piccolo players to see passengers off at the Bento Goncalves station. Champagne definitely wasn't served to passengers at the Garibaldi stop. There were no singers, comics or actors on board performing acts, and an Italian chorale in traditional grab most certainly did not greet travelers in Carlos Barbosa.

But no one these days minds a few perks.

Still, what mostly draws visitors to the wine country is, well, the wine.

There are 23 family run vineyards to visit in the Valley of the Vineyards. When you first drive through the dipping, curving roads of the 110-acre region, the many shades of green tend to take the breath away: Sea green, slate green, pine green, olive green, grape green, green the color of emeralds.

All the vineyards welcome visitors with tours of the fields, wineries and warehouses. Most of them offer restaurants and accommodations. All are outfitted with dark, dank, brick-lined, oaky, wine-casked watering holes, known as bodegas. It is in these cool, shadowy cellars where a bonanza can be had: Visitors are invited to sample as much red, white, rose, grappa, brandy and bubbly as their bodies will allow.

Gratis.

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