Any Brazilian wine connoisseur worth his grapes can relate the story of the Italian immigrants who arrived in the mountainous outback of Rio Grande do Sul in the late 19th century. With them they brought a tradition of wine production that would turn the Serra Gaúcha into Brazil’s modest version of California’s Napa Valley.
But only Silverio Salvati can offer a taste of the Italian varieties favored by those newcomers.
In the Vale dos Vinhedos, the wine tour route just to the east of the city of Bento Gonçalves, Cabernets and Chardonnays hold forth on both large estates and in little cellars. So fully have French varieties taken root that Salvati had to scrounge for surviving seedlings of Peverella and Barbera varieties once imported from the old country. An enologist who tired of making other people’s wine, Salvati not only revived his forebears’ favorite white and red, respectively, but he makes them the old fashioned way. His wine ages in wooden casks – not in the stainless steel vats now commonplace. “We still use wood because that way the wine is in contact with people,” he says.
Salvati built his winery stone-by-stone over the course of nine years, cobbling together irregularly crushed basalt, abundant in the region, and, not coincidentally, the chief building material of the early immigrants. The Cantina Salvati & Sirena stands in an “off Broadway” setting west of town. Inside the octagon-shaped structure, wine casks line the walls. A large table that mirror’s the shape of the room occupies the middle of the main room. By appointment, groups can partake of a traditional meal similar to those enjoyed by early immigrants on Sundays. No spaghetti feast here. Salvati’s historically faithful menu serves up bean soup, polenta (fried cornmeal), chicken stew and frittata (an Italian-style omelet akin to a Spanish tortilla). “Here we bring together two things that I like – wine and culture,” he says.
Salvati’s establishment embodies the spirit of the Caminhos de Pedra (Stone Trails), a living museum otherwise known as the São Pedro district of Bento Gonçalves. The brand name is derived precisely from the remarkable stone buildings built by settlers – many of which survive.
Life was tough for most of the more than 80,000 Italians who began to flow into Rio Grande do Sul starting in 1875. For diverse ideological and geopolitical reasons, the Brazilian imperial government encouraged European immigration. It provided newcomers with land and some basic implements, on credit with a 10-year grace period. Along an imaginary straight track from Bento Gonçalves to Caixias do Sul called the Palmeiro Line, named for the military officer who led the homesteading scheme, the government created 200 rectangular lots of 48.4 hectares each – without regard to terrain.
Today’s visitors enter the Caminho de Pedras precisely at the site of the Barracão, a receiving center for arrivals awaiting their land assignments. Now just a vacant lot, the site once housed a tent city of newbies, their flimsy structures fashioned out of sheets that families had packed for other purposes.
During the first months and even years, many settlers survived thanks to the edible pine seeds that remain a popular snack in the Brazilian south. To hoe their rows, they used makeshift farm tools, often merely poles with handmade spikes at the end, examples of which can be seen at the Immigrant Museum in town. To protect staple crops from the ubiquitous wild animals, Salvati’s ancestors would camp out in the fields, he says.
For a century, immigrants and their descendants scraped out a living from the land. The small-scale farmers survived but hardly thrived. Few earned enough cash to build new homes. So when Júlio Posenato, a specialist in immigrant architecture, went looking for period structures, he found that São Pedro district particularly rich. Their style of the structures could be traced to Bellano, in the Italian Alps, home of most of the immigrants who settled along the Palmeiro Line. “Nowhere else in 500 years has Brazil had popular architecture of this quality, says Posenato.
Yet this architectural heritage was endangered. Seeking to reinvent themselves and escape images as country bumpkins, many locals had hidden the old stone buildings behind plaster facades. Some had eliminated the top third floor of their homes to make them look more like the houses in town and thus, they reasoned, more modern. “In the 1980s, people were ashamed of their heritage,” says Nestor José Foresti, executive secretary of the Caminhos de Pedra Association, who grew up in the district.
Tarcísio Michelon, proprietor of the Dall’Onder Hotel, sparked a revival more than two decades ago by funding a series of pilot renovation projects. When he first took over the management of the hotel, owned by his father-in-law, he knew that the business would depend attracting more visitors. He turned to his mother for advice. “She told me that tourists used to like ‘everything that was ours,’” he says.
Not all his neighbors shared Michelon’s vision, but tourists were attracted by the idea of a living historical museum. After the Cantina and Casa Strapazzon, a stone structure dating to 1880, served as the setting for scenes from the 1995 Oscar nominee film “O Quatrilho,” the project picked up momentum. The Strapazzon complex is open to visitors for wine tasting and to sample locally produced cheese and salami. At the nearby “Casa do Ovelha” (Sheep House) visitors can taste sheep’s milk yogurt and learn about its health benefits; the wooden structure dating to 1917 flourished as the Hotel Cavalet before the construction of the modern highway, back when the São Pedro district stood astride the main drag leading to state capital Porto Alegre. Other highlights include the Tomato and Natural Softdrinks House, in a structure designed by Posenato; the Casa da Erva-Mate (Mate Tea House), where a mechanical mill powered by a waterwheel produces the “chimarrão” tea so dear to gaúchos, natives of Rio Grande do Sul; the Casa Vanni, where visitors can view traditional methods of pasta making and weaving; and the Casa Bertarello, where the Restaurante Nona Ludia serves Italian fare in the basement of a stone structure built by immigrant Guiseppe Dall’Acqua in 1880. “Each house features some aspect of the local culture,” notes Posenato.
Parallel to initiatives aimed at tourists, the district is experiencing its own cultural revival. The community brass band, dormant for years, has been revived. Theater and traditional dance groups emerged, as have groups dedicated to coral music and the violin. Cultural activities for children include a flute troupe. “Representatives from dozens of cities have come here to try to copy the project, says Michelon. “But they only see the commercial element. We’re working with the arts, schools and music.”
Internationally acclaimed gaúcho sculptor João Bez Batti has moved into the Casa Gilmar Cantelli, one of the region’s best examples of a late 19th century stone structure. Using basalt, in his case the red rock of the region, Bez Batti follows the traditions of Egyptians and Pre-Columbian Indians who worked with the material. His painstaking process includes the application of three polishing rocks and eight grades of sandpaper.
Working with his hands, Bez Batti too embodies the spirit of the Caminhos de Pedra. Says Michelon: “Our ancestors who came over here were among the last examples of a civilization that did everything by hand.” Along the Caminhos de Pedra, they’re coming back to life.
Visit the Caminhos de Pedra in Bento Gonçalves
The Caminhos de Pedra can be visited by car or as part of an organized tour. It would also make a great bicycle ride – if you can find wheels. It is too far out of town and, once there, too far between attractions, to walk. No matter how you decide to go, stop beforehand for orientation at the Dall’Onder Hotel, which is on the way. The hotel hosts the headquarters of the Associação Caminhos de Pedra, an NGO that coordinates community development and tourism. The association’s website includes a list of local travel agencies that organize visits. If you stay at the Dall’Onder or anywhere else nearby, make sure to pay a visit to the Atalaia, a local bar that occupies a converted workshop on a hillside. Check out the panoramic view on the back terrace. And say hello to the owner, Alcir. (Rua Goes Monteiro, 615, Bento Gonçalves. Telephone: 452-2516)
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