Finding Conceicao By Way Of Desvio Rizzo Road / Winery A Century-Old House Next To A Football Field , Brasil, Deep In The Wine Country, Late June 2012

... ... Driving along in a small Fiat car that feels like the first Volvo cars that drove like tanks, the Fiat even smaller, even more tank-like. I once drove a fancy Volvo back in the mid seventies and felt so stiff and stern and machine-like, so mechanical, no ease, nor fluidity, no peace, just stress and strain. That's the impression I got from both listening to and watching Laurent drive every step of the way in this exciting trip of ours from Porto Alegre to the mountain town 800 feet above sea level called Bento Goncalves in the winter.

... ... ... ... We used the town of Bento Goncalves as our base and so we drove all around in the Vale Dos Vinhedos to other towns like Farroupilla, Caxias do Sul, Flores De Cunha and Nova Padua. We drove back and forth several times and so we really began to get a real " lay of the land ". ... ... ... ... This was saying something, too as we did it in different weather conditions and we had gray and wet and really thick foggy days where we were covered almost completely in a thick blanket of fog to days that were bright and sunny and clear and really hot : even in this winter.

On this particular drive to see Ruy and Fernanda we had to find their winery using Katiana's directions in English and our GPS system that was also small and not as good as we were hoping for : it did not even speak to us. I guess I am spoiled about that.... ... ... ... Anyway, this trip all came about with a call from Katiane to our hotel and to my room and since I did not speak Portuguese and since she did not speak English it ended with her wishing me a good evening. Fortunately I can understand a fair amount of Portuguese as it is related to Spanish and many of the words and the sounds are similar. That was a great relief for me to finally realize during our ten days there.

Here Laurent and I were driving on a beautiful warm, sunny, bright, baby blue skies late morning and approaching the larger town of Caxias Do Sul and looking for a Mart Center Mall and the road before it called Desvio Rizzo. ... ... ... ... We found that without any difficulty : a big sigh of relief. Next we had to find signs for the small town of Conceicao. We did find the signs for Conceicao and that, too was a relief. I think we missed a key turn and so we were off I believe on an extended round-about route to get to Ruy and Fernanda.

We did not know : we did know that it was all quite confusing as we saw splits in the roads and small roads become even smaller and lead into the thick woods so that we wondered where we were being led? ... ... ... ... We did stop frequently and Laurent did talk to first a man, then a man with a small son and a wife at their store, then a woman parked on an even smaller road that the one that made me think we were close to being deep in the Amazon jungle. We passed her on our left and Laurent back-tracked so that Laurent could ask her directions. She confirmed that we were in fact close and on the right path.

This woman's path was the same as ours and so we drove towards to the town of Conceicao and she had to redirect us once and as we road up a hill and turned around we had Ruy come out waving his hands at us to alert us that we had arrived! We never did see the church that we were supposed to see? Oh well, we had arrived and we pulled in to his driveway and stopped in front of the winery that was deceptively small and with the doors closed I would have had no idea that it was a winery at all.

I did learn that the outsides of buildings could be quite deceiving. On another occasion I would have had no idea that the winery was as large inside as it was. Often they made me think that we were not at the winery but at a small building as often they did not look from the outside that they went back farther or that there was more lying below and covered? That's okay. We saw some with both Ruy and his wife Fernanda and we were able to taste a selection of their wines and that was enough for us.

Fernanda and Ruy were super friendly and welcoming and were definitely pleased to have us there at their home and winery. They rolled out the welcome mats for us and I for one definitely felt completely welcome and at home. This pleased me enormously. We hit it off immediately and Ruy could not stop from smiling. he prefaced everything with a grin and a smile and I loved this. Fernanda was equally attentive and receptive and curious and cheerful. This was a great first-meeting and I enjoyed speaking to them with some English, Portuguese and Spanish all blended together. We all struggled and yet it was all very relaxed and pleasant and there was no problem. We all just wanted to communicate and be understood. We achieved this pretty well : not completely but enough to keep things rolling in the right direction. Amazing, really.