“He came from Vicenza. The Italians all made their own wine, but my grandfather had the first commercial winery. Chapadão is the oldest one in this part of Rio Grande do Sul. Do you know anybody who might like to invest? Joint venture?”
The wine Guerra gives me is just as I remembered it—even after so much time, even tasting it not at a feast but under the thatched roof of a roadside stand featuring roast chicken and homemade sausage. The roads in Rio Grande do Sul are paved now, but the view is the same: brilliant green upholstering a landscape of isolated, weirdly symmetrical hills under a bright blue sky. Cattle. Caracaras. The wine in my caneca is bluish red, new wine, a crude country brew nothing like the great ones. But it is as sentimentally appropriate as a happy memory coming into perfect focus. I had drunk this very wine before, at the Itú churrasco 35 years earlier.
Labels to look for
Much has changed in the vineyards and wineries of Chile and Argentina in recent years, but international consultants and 3-D labels notwithstanding, plenty of the region’s Malbecs, Carmenères, and Bonardas—and even Cabernet Sauvignons and Merlots—have great character.
- Achával Ferrer
- Altos Las Hormigas
- Arboleda
- BenMarco
- Bodega Norton
- Caliterra
- Casa Lapostolle
- Clos de los Siete
- Crios
- Errázuriz
- Kaiken
- Graffigna
- Lo Tengo
- Luca
- Mapema
- Montes
- Nativo
- Pascual Toso
- La Posta del Viñatero
- Seña
- Susana Balbo
- Terrazas de los Andes
- Tikal
- Trapiche
- Valentín Bianchi
- Veramonte
- Yacochuya
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