By Rosa Moraes

In collective imagination, literature and daily life, Brazil is known as a beer and caipirinha country. Beer for its national preference, that can be seen by naked eyes on every bar’s table, home barbecue or sunny afternoon on the beach. And caipirinha because it became one of the most iconic symbols of Brazilian gastronomy, celebrating the marriage between the simplicity of lemon and sugar and the strength of our cachaça (typical Brazilian liquor made from sugar cane). 

Truth be told, in this race wine never really had a place at Brazilians table - at least until now. Recently, love for wine started to increase in Brazil, as well as our National production. The evidence is that per capita consumption of wine around here broke a record in 2020, reaching 2,78 Liters per adult person - a 30% growth compared to 2019, according to data from the Brazilian company specialized in food and beverage import and export Ideal Consulting. Specialists believe this boom is due to the pandemic, that obliged all of us to stay home. If at the bars beer used to flow, at Brazilian homes, during isolation, wine was the one to bring some comfort.

Between brackets: as I was doing my research to write this short article, I bended over the history of caipirinha and found out that this drink’s origin has an interesting similarity to wine’s results in Brazil during the pandemics. One of the most embraced versions by historians is that caipirinha was created in the countryside of São Paulo in 1918 as - amazingly - a home medicine for people that got the Spanish flu. The original recipe was made with lemon, honey, garlic and a bit of cachça. With time, honey and garlic gave in their place to sugar and ice and our caipirinha was then born as we know it today (and as it will still be when the coronavirus pandemic is over or after any tsunami the Universe can bring in the future).

This happy ending may prove, on the other hand, that maybe wine will finally get a definitive place at Brazilians taste. And as the consumer market opens itself for wine labels from everywhere in the world and Brazilian wine producers multiply and evolve, a small seed that was planted even more recently starts to sprout: Brazilian natural wines.

Worldwide, this is already a strong movement. In Brazil, as wine itself is still finding its place, natural wine has a very specific niche - and faces a lot of challenges on the way. From the several climatic changes that happen in our territory to the lack of good organic or biodynamic grapes, it is a work in progress inside the work progress of making natural wine itself. Another resistance test for Brazilian natural wine producers is our narrow-minded legislation, that looks at small-scale and artisanal producers in the same way it looks at the great industry. So Brazilian natural winemakers fight not only against storms and heat and bad harvests, but mainly to gain their right to exist, work and sell their product to the market.

Even with all the obstacles in the way, though, we already have beautiful examples of Brazilian natural wine to show off. The picture that comes to mind when I talk about them is the one of a lonely flower growing in a whole in the asphalt. Most of them are from Rio Grande do Sul, a colder region in the South of Brazil. They usually say they are still crawling, but, believe me, with early exquisite results.

It is the case of  Outro Vinho (“Another Wine”), from three friends that got together to make pearls such as Pinot Maravilha (“Wonder Pinot”) and Incerteza Viva (“Alive Uncertainty”) and Vinha Unna, where the couple Maria Santos and Israel Dedéa grow their grapes on a biodiverse land, along with corns, pumpkins, criollo beans, aromatic herbs and flowers. We also have very young producers, such as Vanessa Medin, from Vinhos Artesanais Vanessa Medin, that came from a family of winegrowers and tries to recover artisanal and ancestral standards, and Daniel Lopes, from Vinhas do Tempo, that started his fermentation on his grandmother’s old kitchen and now sells his magnificent natural wines to the most fancy restaurants of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

I must also mention two guys that came from the craft beer movement and got together to explore the world of natural wines in their winery Vivente: Diego Cartier and Micael Eckert. They say that producing natural wine in Brazil is a work of ants, but they are willing to spread this counterculture in a country that is opening itself to new experiences. The most beautiful thing about it, Cartier says, is to see people interested not only in the beverage, but in the story behind the beverage, that makes each bottle unique.

That is certainly why, even with all the challenges and lack of legal support, natural wine producers are winning the battle in Brazil: more and more specialized bars are opening, restaurants are including alive wines lists, producers are improving their techniques and Brazilian people are actually tasting - and loving - natural wines. That’s surely the true beauty of gastronomy. When it allows us to live rich and unique stories, recognition becomes a journey with no return. Cheers to that - or, as we say in Brazil, “saúde”!

Outro Vinho: www.outrovinho.com.br

Vinha Unna: www.vinhaunna.com.br

Vinhos Artesanais Vanessa Mdein: www.vanessakmedin.com.br

Vinhas do Tempo: www.vinhasdotempo.com.br

Vivente: www.vivente.bio

Arte da Vinha: www.artedavinha.com.br

“Original article published @ Vogue Brasil”