🇧🇷 Brazil · South
São Joaquim is a highland town at the top of the Serra Catarinense, in southern Santa Catarina, known for being one of the coldest places in Brazil and one where snow falls relatively often in winter. Sitting at over 1,300 metres, it is famous for its apples —it's one of the country's biggest producers— and for its high-altitude wines, as well as being a destination for winter and nature tourism.
Its great claim to fame is the cold and the snow: every winter, São Joaquim draws Brazilians from all over the country who want to watch snow fall, a rarity in Brazil. But the town offers much more: apple orchards and the cider and juice plants, the modern high-altitude wineries producing fine wines in one of Brazil's loftiest terroirs, the Parque Nacional de São Joaquim with its highland nature, and a landscape of upland fields, araucaria pines and canyons.
This guide covers the essentials of São Joaquim with a practical eye: how to get there and get around, when to look for snow and cold, what to see among orchards, wineries and nature, where to sleep and eat in the mountains, and how to pair it with neighbouring Urubici and the highland route. São Joaquim is snow, apples, high-altitude wine and real cold: the definitive winter and mountain experience of Santa Catarina.
São Joaquim grew up in the Serra Catarinense as a settlement tied to highland cattle ranching, the tropeiros and the gaúcho culture of the campos de cima da serra, in one of the highest and coldest regions of Brazil. Cattle-ranching settlement and, later, the arrival of European immigrants populated these uplands. In the 20th century the town found its economic engine in temperate fruit growing —above all the apple, which needs cold to bear fruit— and became one of the country's leading producers. Decades later, high-altitude winemaking and winter tourism, drawn by the snow and the cold, added new vocations. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The southern state of beaches, islands and cool highlands: settled by Azoreans, Germans and Italians, stage of Garibaldi's short-lived Juliana Republic and of the bloody Guerra do Contestado. Land of Florianópolis and its dozens of beaches, of the Blumenau Oktoberfest and of the only corner of Brazil where it regularly snows.
Read the history of Santa Catarina →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Picture a corner of Brazil where in midwinter the temperature drops to ten below zero, frost covers the fields and, every so often, real snow falls. It's not a mistake: the place exists, and it's called São Joaquim. Between 1980 and 2010, 103 snowfalls were recorded here —more than in any other town in the country— and in 1957 a historic blizzard left up to 1.5 metres of accumulated snow. In a tropical country, this town perched at over 1,300 metres in the Serra Catarinense is an astonishing climatic anomaly, and much of its history and identity rests on that oddity.
The region is part of the campos de cima da serra, a landscape of high-altitude pampa, araucaria forests and a harsh climate that sets it radically apart from the rest of Brazil. Its settlement was tied, as across the whole Serra Catarinense and the gaúcho highlands, to the tropeiros —the drovers who moved cattle along the old southern trails— and to highland ranching. The open fields, good for raising cattle, drew ranchers and smallholders who gave rise to a rural, gaúcho, highland society with chimarrão, churrasco and country life as its markers.
The araucaria pine, abundant in the region, was another key resource: its timber and its seed (the pinhão, a typical autumn and winter food) were part of the local economy and culture. On that ranching and highland base, the settlement of São Joaquim gradually took shape.
The great economic shift in São Joaquim's history came in the 20th century with the development of temperate fruit growing, and the apple in particular. The region's cold highland climate turned out to be ideal for this fruit, which needs to build up many chill hours to flower and set fruit properly, something uncommon in Brazil.
Once the crop was introduced and expanded, São Joaquim became one of the country's leading apple producers, with vast orchards (pomares) covering the rural surroundings and an associated industry of packing plants, juices, ciders and by-products. The apple became the town's symbol and the engine of its economy, shaping the farming landscape of the highlands.
Fruit growing transformed the look of the place and its society, drawing labour, investment and technical know-how. São Joaquim established itself as the 'apple capital' in the Brazilian imagination, an identity it keeps to this day and part of its tourist appeal.
Over the past few decades São Joaquim has added two new vocations to its ranching and fruit-growing tradition: high-altitude winemaking and winter tourism. The region has established itself as one of Brazil's vinhos de altitude areas, making fine wines in one of the country's loftiest terroirs, above 1,000-1,300 metres. The altitude, the cold and the day-night temperature swing favour quality grapes, and several modern wineries began producing and receiving wine tourists, in a young but well-regarded industry.
At the same time, São Joaquim's fame as one of the coldest places in Brazil, where snow falls relatively often in winter, turned it into a winter tourism destination unlike any other in the country. Every cold season, Brazilians from every region travel to the Serra Catarinense hoping to see and touch snow, an experience most have never had.
Today São Joaquim combines its apple orchards, its high-altitude wines, its highland nature (with the Parque Nacional de São Joaquim) and its cold climate into a varied tourist offering. Together with neighbouring Urubici and the southern canyons, it forms part of the great highland and cold-nature route of southern Brazil, a surprising contrast with the country's tropical image.
No other trait shaped São Joaquim's fame as much as its cold. Sitting on one of the highest plateaus in southern Brazil, the town shares with Urupema, Bom Jardim da Serra (in Santa Catarina) and São José dos Ausentes (Rio Grande do Sul) the title of coldest place in the country. According to INMET, the lowest temperature recorded in São Joaquim was −10 °C, on 2 August 1991; in recent winters it is not unusual for the Serra Catarinense to post the lowest readings in all of Brazil.
What makes it unique, though, is not just the cold but the snow. São Joaquim is the Brazilian town where it snows most: between 1980 and 2010 it recorded 103 snowfalls, and local memory still holds the great blizzard of 1957, the biggest ever recorded in Santa Catarina, with up to 1.5 metres of snow. Every time a cold front promises white, news outlets from all over the country send reporters and the mountain roads fill with cars: for millions of Brazilians who have never seen snow fall, São Joaquim is the only chance to touch it without leaving the country.
That phenomenon, sometimes billed as the 'Brazilian Siberia', went from meteorological curiosity to economic engine. What for centuries was a hardship for ranchers —cold that killed livestock and burned the pastures— has become, over the past few decades, the town's biggest tourist draw and the basis of an industry of pousadas, cafés with fireplaces and 'winter tourism' packages that today supports much of the local economy.
The settlement of São Joaquim grew from the 19th century onward around the upland fields of the Serra Geral in Santa Catarina, on land that had long served as trails and pasture for the tropeiros. The village, originally tied to the freguesia of Lages, grew as a stopping point and ranching centre in one of the highest and coldest spots in southern Brazil.
São Joaquim was raised to municipality status at the end of the 19th century, in 1887, splitting off from Lages and consolidating its administrative autonomy. The name honours Saint Joachim, in keeping with the Catholic tradition of the colonists. Through the 20th century, the arrival of immigrants —among them descendants of Italians, Germans and other Europeans, alongside the highland's Luso-Brazilian and gaúcho population— shaped a distinctive highland identity.
That identity combines the gaúcho culture of the open fields (chimarrão, churrasco, country dress and customs) with life at altitude: the harsh cold, the araucaria pines, the pinhão and, later, fruit growing. São Joaquim thus took shape as a singular highland town within Santa Catarina, unlike the coast and unlike the immigrant colonies of the valleys.