Ruralities and wine tourism at Vale dos Vinhedos/ Serra Gaúcha - RS

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to present a brief history of the territorial formation of Vale dos Vinhedos (Brazil), lead by the figure of the “colono” winegrower, calling attention to the relevance of wine tourism in this context. Wine tourism understood as an activity the revalues and reinvents the rural world, transforming a productive space into a leisure space and enabling pluriactivity to the winegrower. The current qualitative research consisted of bibliographical review of books, thesis and dissertations where the spatial fragment is Vale dos Vinhedos. It was found that in a territory with a supposedly homogeneous identity – inhabited by winegrowers of Italian ancestry – distinct ruralities coexist and are manifested, by different means of production, relationship with grape and wine market, land uses and wine tourism relevance. In this region, big wine companies receiving a large number of tourists, medium sized family owned wineries who own a substantial part of their income to direct sales to visitors, wine cooperative members who preserve artisanal food and wine making traditions while remaining relatively distant from the tourism market, as well as new players with an ecological perspective of agriculture focused on organic grape growing and small scale winemaking, all coexist. Therefore the study concludes that the Vale different ruralities impact the multiple experiences the wine tourism has to offer. The wine, a high-added value agricultural product, induces endogenous territorial development and contradicts the idea of structural precariousness in rural Brazil. And wine tourism strengthens the ruralities that surround wine.

Key words: Ruralities; Wine growing; Wine tourism; Vale dos Vinhedos.