Wine - A Pleasant Surprise

I was never a big fan of wine.  I had mostly tried white wine, usually finding it alright, though not always to my taste.  A couple of tastes of red wine left me rather unimpressed so I came to the conclusion that wine was not my drink – stick to beer.  Move forward a few years and I was working at a hotel bar discussing wine with a regular who was the manager of another hotel in town.  He told me that I shouldn’t say I don’t like wine, I just don’t like the wines I had tried.  It made sense to me so, after my shift had finished, I decided to out this to the test and tried a glass of his suggestion, a pinotage from South Africa.  It was a revelation: tasty and very easy to drink and instantly proved his point.   Based on this, I tried other wines, learned what I liked, what I didn’t like and was able to give better information to customers (classic excuse: not just having a drink, I’m doing research!) 

I now very much enjoy a glass of red wine (occasionally a white), although I am far from an expert.  My palate may not be the most refined, although I know what I like, which is the most important thing.  So what’s all this got to do with Brazil?

I had heard that wine is produced in Rio Grande do Sul, the southernmost state in Brazil which was heavily populated by Italian immigrants.  No one that I had spoken to had much to say about Brazilian wine, either positive or negative – it appeared to simply not exist and was shunned in favour of more expensive wines from Argentina and Chile, as well as Europe, Australasia, South Africa and California.  Never-the-less I decided to try a bottle from Serra Gaúcha (this was about 7 or 8 years ago.)  It wasn’t bad, but not the greatest wine I’d ever tried.  

I even tried vinho colonial, a young, countryside wine.  The colour of vinho colonial was what struck me first, a pinkish purple closer to a bright flower than any red wine I’d ever seen.  The wine itself has quite a strong flavour which is quite sour.  It is drinkable, but not really my thing.  I resigned myself to the idea that any wine I drink here would be imported and have a price tag to match, save for occasional trips across the border to Argentina where I am told wine is cheaper.  Once I have my RNE (ID card for foreigners – I need this card to re-enter the country as a resident) I’ll take a trip across to find out.

But in the spirit of trying new things which had got me into wine in the first place, I didn’t give up.  We had a visit from my wife’s great uncle and his family and we went to the supermarket to stock up.  We decided to buy a couple of bottles of wine so I browsed the shelves in the supermarket, trying to decide on a Chilean or Argentinian red.  A bottle of pinotage caught my eye – that variety that got me into wines in the first place – which came from the Marcus James winery in Serra Gaúcha.  I picked it up, along with a pinot noir from the same vineyard, and brought them home to try. 

Marcus James Pinotage from Serra
Gaúcha in Rio Grande do Sul

And the results were good!  I’m not going to go into notes of summer fruits and smokey finish and all that stuff, but I found it to be a very tasty and very drinkable wine.  Everyone at the table enjoyed the pinotage so it was only a matter of time before the pinot noir was opened and polished off to much the same results.  I later tried a cabernet sauvignon from the same vineyard and a merlot from Saint Germain, both of which were very good.  If there are any wine experts reading that are disappointed by my descriptions, I invite you to track down these wines and let me know what you think!  As I said before, I’m not an expert on wines, I just know what I like. 

I don’t know whether the wine industry in Brazil has improved over the last few years or whether the quality was always there and I didn’t find it, but there are good Brazilian wines out there.  A recent article on the magazine program “Globo Reporter” about the health benefits of wine and pure grape juice may be increasing the popularity of local wines, and a soap opera set around vineyards in Rio Grande do Sul, “Além do Tempo,” has probably helped too.