Clemente Maziero, owner of Maziero Cellars in Jundiai, Brazil, poses for a photo July 17. The vineyard will provide 60 bottles of white and rose wines for the July 24 luncheon during Pope Francis' visit to Aparecida. CNS photo/Lise Alves

Brazilian family vineyards to provide wine for pope in Aparecida

By  Lise Alves, Catholic News Service

JUNDIAI, Brazil - Pope Francis' visit to Aparecida July 24 has a special meaning for two families who have been asked to provide the wine Pope Francis will use at Mass and a luncheon.

Both vineyards are located in Jundiai, about 40 miles outside the city of Sao Paulo.

The Maziero family vineyard -- like the vineyards of the nearly two dozen other wine producers in the region -- is small.

"We have 10 workers to help out," chuckles Clemente Maziero, whose grandfather came over from Italy in the late 1800s, settled in the region and started to grow grapes to make wine. Maziero said that during the harvest, January through March, he might hire two or three extra hands to help out.

"It is a family operation as it was when my grandfather ran it," he said.

His winery, or cellar, produces only 60,000 liters of wine per year, and he sells all of his bottles in a little store, located within the property.

"We don't sell the wine in supermarkets or specialty stores. If you want it, you have to come by and pick it up," he said.

Maziero said the family is extremely honored to have been asked to supply 60 bottles of white and rose wines for Pope Francis' luncheon with bishops and seminarians in Aparecida.

This is not the first time his wines have been served to a pope.

"In 2007, when Pope Benedict XVI came to Aparecida, we were also asked to supply some of the wines used," he told Catholic News Service proudly.

Less than three miles away, the Brunholi family says the request to supply the wine to be used at the Mass celebrated by Pope Francis came as a surprise.

"We never expected it," said Paulo Brunholi, who runs the business his great-grandfather started after emigrating from Italy in 1889.

The Brunholis produce approximately 80,000 to 100,000 liters of wine per year. They produce 13 types of wine, although not all of them are from the grapes harvested in their vineyards.

"We obtain red grapes from the South to produce our red wines, but they are still made like they were when my great-grandfather was alive," Brunholi said.

He said that the region produces a robust wine, with regional taste, very different from the fine red wine usually found in stores.

"It has lower sugar content, so the taste is more pronounced," he said.

He added that the only request church officials made was that the words "wine for Mass" be inserted on the 80 bottles of red wine supplied.

Brunholi said he believed he was asked to supply the wine for the Mass because he has also been a supplier of the sacramental wine for St. Benedict Monastery in Sao Paulo City.

On July 24 his father, Arnaldo Brunholi, will be sitting in one of the first rows at the Shrine of Our Lady of Aparecida, with the knowledge that the wine served in the mass came from his family's land. "We just feel exceptionally honored that the pope will try one of our wines."

The wine served at World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro will be provided by Salton, from Rio Grande do Sul.

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