Wines? In Brazil?

When Blind Muscat got the invite for the Brazilian wine tasting he attended this afternoon, he had to make it a priority. I mean, don’t those folks just drink beer and cachaça, the moonshiner’s answer to rum?

Well, of course not. If globalization means anything it means that folks will do their best to grow grapes and make wine anywhere on the planet, within some pretty broad climate limits; and they will succeed, the transfer of knowledge and capital being what it is. So, not to my surprise, the range of offerings from the 11 wineries represented at this event, sponsored by Wines From Brazil, tasted . . . pretty much like wine.

Truth In Blogging: The other reason I went, maybe the main reason, is that in my opinion, Brazilian Portuguese is the most captivating, mellifluous, sexy language spoken on earth. I don’t speak this magical tongue, but I listen to a lot of music sung in it, and I can even pronounce a word or two passably well. So as I cruised the tables, I would make a point of asking a question that the sales rep/interpreter had to translate for the winemaker/owner, just to hear the two of them talk. Who needs wine?

But I digress. Brazilian wine history starts, of course, in the 16^th century with the Portuguese colonials, the same folks who brought Brazil the slave trade and the other things that made it the amazing culture it is today. The modern wine industry is still small, with far more acreage (hectareage?) devoted to juice grapes and American hybrids than to classic vinifera, and more to pink grapes than either white or red. And the modern wine connection isn’t through Portugal; it’s by way of Italian immigrants from the late 19^th century on, similar to the story in Argentina and Uruguay. Vineyards and production facilities are overwhelmingly located in the far south o the country, below Rio and São Paolo, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, more or less parallel to the wine regions of Chile, Argentina and Uruguay. 

So what kind of wines do they make, at least to show off to the North American market? Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Chardonnay—what did you expect? It’s what every fledging wine producing country does to plant its flag and prove it can make mainstream wine, not just trivia question wine. Whether that is a rational long-term strategy, compared to crafting a national wine identity around something else—as Argentina is doing with Malbec and Torrontes—is debatable.

I was surprised by the number of bubblies offered by several producers, most done with classic Champagne grapes, plus the occasional Proseco and sparkling Moscatel. (The latter, of which I had two examples, were among my favorites from the tasting: 6% sugar, 6% alcohol, like Moscato d’Asti with that lovely Brazilian accent—what more can you ask for?)

In the red department, the unexpected ingredient was the prevalence of Tannat, mainly in blends. Not the easiest grape on earth to love, given to rough tannins and stingy fruit, Tannat can nonetheless give useful backbone to red blends, as it did several times here. I was on my sixth or seventh Tannat when the light bulb went off: Brazilian wine country is right over the bolder from the Uruguayan vineyards, where Tannat makes up over half the red production.

The good news on the reds: the alcohol levels were refreshingly low, anywhere from 11.5% to no more than 13%. The bad news: there were some pretty green wines in the mix, not just unripe by California’s overblown standards, but unripe by anybody’s standards.

The stars of the tasting were probably the wines from Don Laurindo, a Merlot, a Malbec and two Cabernets, all full of ripe flavors, expensive but under-control oak, and consummate winemaking. Priced (suggested US retail) from $35 to $105, they had better be good, because they’re aiming to play in a very tough, crowded, upscale league.

There’s not much point in naming bottles, since these wines are devilishly hard to find; one reason for the tasting is that the wineries are looking for importers/distributors. Several of them have a toehold on the east coast. Sooner or alter, you’ll start finding well-made $10 Brazilian wine at your local supermarket, and the real fun will start.

Meantime, there’s more information about the folks behind this particular tasting at Wines from Brazil. (You’ll notice that the first sentence of the history page says it all started with the Italians in 1875, which is about 300 years and one country off.)