Brazilian wine map expands beyond the South and almost half of the country already produces

Deisi da Costa, 33, and Michele Zanella Cordeiro, 30, barely knew each other when they decided to take a road trip together, which would take nine months, to visit wineries throughout Brazil. Introduced a few days earlier at a dinner party, they had little in common.

Deisi had been elected “the best sommelier in Rio Grande do Sul”, while Michele, although trained as a technologist in oenology, had been away from the area for years.

“But a few minutes of conversation were enough for us to realize that we thought very similarly”, says Michele. “We left dinner already knowing that we wanted to put together a project.”

At the first meeting, they decided on a cultural expedition called “Vou de Vinho – An experience between Wines and Vineyards”, which resulted in a book to be released at the Wine South America fair, next September, in Bento Gonçalves (RS).

The trip lasted from September 2021 to June 2022 and visited one hundred wineries in ten states and the Federal District. A fun project, guarantee both. “The headache was choosing which would be the hundred wineries. In Rio Grande do Sul alone there are more than 700”, says Deisi.

There has been a boom in the production of quality fine wines across the country in the last two decades. As a result, the Brazilian wine map underwent an expansion and gained a huge diversity of terroirs.

Until the early 1980s, commercial production of fine wines was concentrated exclusively in Serra Gaúcha.

“At that time, some initiatives began to appear in Campanha Gaúcha, in Serra do Sudeste (RS) and in Vale do São Francisco, on the border between Bahia and Pernambuco”, says Embrapa Grape and Wine researcher Jorge Tonietto, responsible for the Nomination processes. of Origin and Denomination of Origin.

“Soon came Santa Catarina and Campos de Cima (RS). And in the 2000s, winter wines arrived. That was an explosion. In 2020, we identified 12 winter wine production centers with their own characteristics, a unique terroir that , in the future, it could be indications of origins. It’s all very dynamic. If at that time there were 12, today there must be more.”

In São Paulo and Minas Gerais, for example, they identified seven wine regions, with Serra da Mantiqueira being the region common to both states. There are Andradas and São Bento do Sapucaí, for example.

São Paulo still has vineyards in Alta Mogiana (Ribeirão Preto), in the East-Northeast region (Espírito Santo do Pinhal) and in the Southwest Center-South region (Itaí). Minas, on the other hand, produces fine wines in the South (Cordislândia), in Alta Paraibana (Serra da Canastra) and in the Jequitinhonha Valley (Diamantina). In all these regions, winter wine reigns.

But what are winter wines? Brazil is the only country in the world that has three different viticulture systems: traditional, tropical and winter (see art).

Traditional viticulture is that practiced since ancient times in regions where the plant produces fruit in the summer and goes into dormancy in the winter. For climatic reasons, in the case of European grapes, which are very sensitive to rain, this system has always been difficult to implement in much of the country — it rains too much at harvest time.

A double pruning system developed by Epamig made it possible to harvest the grapes in the middle of the year in regions where the winter is dry, it is hot during the day and cold at night, such as São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro, Espírito Santo, Bahia, Goiás and Federal District.

And, soon, we will have winter harvest wines also in Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul.

“Now we need to understand which varieties are right for each micro-region”, says winemaker Daniel Panizzi, president of Uvibra (Brazilian Union of Vitiviniculture). “Which ones are better adapted. What is the best management. Only time will tell us that.”

Each small region has a different terroir and yields a unique wine. “Talking about Minas, for example, is talking about an entire country, with different regions and different climates”, says winemaker Cristian Sepúlveda from Vinícola Terra Nossa (Espirito Santo do Pinhal), who provides consultancy for projects in several states.

“We can mention high-altitude places like Caldas, ideal for sparkling wines. Or talk about São Gonçalo de Sapucaí, with a milder climate and heavy soils, and its vocation for premium red wines. Or even Passos de Minas, where the soils are heavy and the climate is warmer, great for full-bodied reds like Cabernet Sauvignon.”

The spread of vineyards across the country cannot be explained solely by the creation of winter harvesting technology. Much is also due to the ripple effect that successful initiatives provoke.

So much so that in places where it is not possible to harvest in winter because it is too cold in the middle of the year, such as Campanha Gaúcha, Serra Catarinense and Curitiba, there was also a proliferation of enterprises.

“Currently, the production of fine wines in Santa Catarina exceeds one million bottles a year”, says sommelière Néa Silveira.

“There are 250 hectares of vineyards, spread over small-scale wineries. Everything is handcrafted, focusing on quality.”

Several of these wineries are the result of heavy investments by entrepreneurs from other areas who are passionate about wine.

In the Northeast, in turn, tropical viticulture prevails. Mainly in the semiarid, where it rains little. There irrigation is necessary, there is no dormancy period and there are two harvests a year.

There is also an expansion of production there, with projects in Alagoas, Sergipe and Paraíba. “The expansion is smaller than in the Southeast and Midwest, because the added value of wines from the semi-arid region is lower”, says Embrapa researcher Giuliano Elias Pereira, responsible for many years of research in the São Francisco Valley.

The region produces a lot of sparkling wine for entry, young wines, with aromas of tropical fruits that, despite being quick to consume, are honest and have prices that please a lot of people. That too is diversity.