354: Why are Brazil's sparkling wines spectacular? Tufi Meyer reveals the answers in Wines of Brazil

Why are the sparkling wines the most successful wines? What is it about the wines of Brazil, the terroir, that really makes them excel? How does double pruning and winter harvesting help Brazilian vineyards produce higher-quality wines? How did family farming traditions shape Brazil’s wine regions, and what is the crossover between coffee and grape cultivation?

In this episode of the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast, I'm chatting with Tufi Meyer, author of the new book Wines of Brazil.

You can find the wines we discussed at https://www.nataliemaclean.com/winepicks

 

Giveaway

Two of you are going to win a copy of Tufi Neder Meyer's terrific book, Wines of Brazil. To qualify, all you have to do is email me at [email protected] and let me know that you’ve posted a review of the podcast. I’ll choose two people randomly from those who contact me. Good luck!

 

Highlights

Where did Tufi’s love for wine come from?

Why do red sparkling wines from southern Brazil pair so well with the traditional dish feijoada?

Which characteristics make Brazilian sparkling wines particularly successful compared to other wine styles?

What’s the biggest misconception about Brazilian wine?

How does Brazil’s annual wine production compare to other South American producers?

Why hasn't Brazil’s wine industry developed as large as those of Argentina and Chile?

How did Portuguese colonial policies impact the development of Brazil’s wine industry?

How does Brazil’s size and climate diversity influence viticulture?

How has the legacy of land ownership and agricultural practices from the coffee industry shaped modern Brazilian viticulture?

Is there any crossover between the coffee and wine industries?

How do the different types of viticulture practiced in Brazil differ?

What is unique about tropical viticulture in Brazil?

Why do some Syrah wines from Brazil resemble those from the northern Rhône in France more than Australian Shiraz?

What challenges do Brazilian vineyards face due to the humid climate in certain regions?

 

Key Takeaways

Brazil has all sorts of sparkling wines, from traditional method, made like champagne to sweet, made from Muscat in zesty fashion, passing through tank methods, sparklers. But all of them have a very important character. It's fruit ripeness. Fruit is forward in Brazilian wines. Maybe elegant sometimes, or very well declared at other times, but it's easy to perceive and it's easy to like it. There's a fresh character to our sparklers.

If you plant vines in Brazil in places where it is too humid and too warm at that harvest time, you won't get good quality grapes. But if this place has a winter which is not too cold, which has sunny days and cool nights, if you've succeeded in having the harvest during such a time, you have good grapes. That's precisely what double pruning makes. You prune in January, you start a new growth cycle, and the vines will be ripened during our winter. So the winter harvesting. Dry time, sunny days, cool nights.

When the Italian immigrants arrived, they were given pieces of land. That's what is today Serra Gaúcha, our main wine-producing region. The relations between coffee and wine have started very much more recently, when double pruning and winter harvest developed here in a coffee region. And today the vines are planted in the same places where coffee does well. In slopes with little risk of frosts, better drain the terrain and many times together, side by side, grapes and coffee groves.

 

About Tufi Neder Meyer

Tufi Neder Meyer, a graduate of UFMG Medical School with a PhD in surgery, has studied wines since before college and has been a wine educator since the 1990s. He lives and works in Brazil’s south-east, teaching at The Wine School Brazil (WSET approved). Tufi authored ‘Wines of Brazil’, a part of the Classic Wine Library of L’Académie du Vin.

 

 

 

 

To learn more, visit https://www.nataliemaclean.com/354.