Soil & Climate

One tends to think of Brazil as warm, yet the sparkling wines of the Serra Gaúcha are made in the mountains. The Altos de Pinto Bandeira area lies above 500 meters and averages 632 meters, with terrain ranging from rolling to mountainous. The altitude brings cooler nights, and cool nights preserve acidity in the berries. A sparkling wine needs this acidity to stay fresh on the palate rather than turning heavy.

The soil is volcanic. The rocks of the Serra Geral, a massive lava formation in the south, are here mostly acidic to moderately acidic. In many sites the rock is fractured, which makes a noticeable difference for the vines: roots find their way through, and the soil retains less water than heavy clay. There is no chalk or limestone here as known from Champagne.

At 72.45 square kilometers, the Vale dos Vinhedos is somewhat larger than the Pinto Bandeira area. About 61 percent of the land lies in Bento Gonçalves, a good 33 percent in Garibaldi, and just over 5 percent in Monte Belo do Sul. Alongside sparkling wine, still wines also grow there, and the appellation rules keep the two cleanly separated.

Some houses age their bottles underground, where the temperature stays consistently cool. Casa Valduga in the Vale dos Vinhedos cites twelve months in an underground cellar for one of its sparkling wines. Making sparkling wine in the mountains of a warm country means playing with elevation: aroma develops up high, while the wine rests in the cellar.

For travelers, this means the Serra Gaúcha is not a single, uniform wine country. Between the slopes of Pinto Bandeira and the valleys near Bento Gonçalves lie only a few kilometers, but several hundred meters of elevation difference.