Wine

The wine down here is fantastic. On the 24th the anthro crew minus Zack visited (winery), escorted by Anna, an English teacher/lawyer, her husband Marcelo who is also a lawyer, and his intern, who I can't remember the name of. We first went on a "visual history" tour, where we learned about the region of Caxias and the heavy Italian immigration that occurred in the late 1800s. It had nothing to do with wine, but was interesting anyway. Here is a picture of all of us minus Marcelo marveling at our guide, in authentic (I think, it was all gibberish) with 19th century getup: http://tinyurl.com/q4bvsg

After our tour, we headed out to one of Caxias' oldest winery, and it looked fantastic. For $R15, we got the grand tour of how they made the wine. All their trade secrets would be mine!..if it wasn't for the fact that I couldn't understand our guide. Here I am looking concerned I haven't had any wine yet: http://tinyurl.com/onrx9y And another of me much happier. Yes, the large black mass behind us is wine in some stage between being grapes on vines to being in someone's stomach. The bottles go back to the wall. http://tinyurl.com/onxb4m

The vastness of this place is unreal. I have never seen so much wine in my life. In the largest room of the cellar, roughly two football fields long, sits rows and rows of wine in various stages of aging. There is also a special wine chilling room, of which I'm unsure what to make: http://tinyurl.com/o75dhz . This is what the stone cooridor, leading to an immaculate vineyard looks like from one end to the other: http://tinyurl.com/ojzquv And each row looks like the picture with all the bottles.

Thanks all for reading my blog..I know I haven't updated it at all hardly, but I hope you liked reading it. We're leaving for Rio on Thursday, so today and tomorrow we have a lot to work on. We have a final project due! I probably won't be updating this thing any more after this post. See you back in the States!

-Dan