Will Lyons on wine: Hot stuff

Published on Friday 27 February 2009 13:46

THE tasting room at Pizzato's winery sits on a pocket of shallow clay soil high above the trained vineyards that sprawl downwards on the lush, rolling hills of the Serra Gaucha mountain range.

The air is filled with the scent of wild flowers and the heavily perfumed pollen of the flowering Ipe trees that pepper the fertile, green landscape. This is Brazil, about as far from the wine route as it is possible to imagine. My journey from Edinburgh involves three flights, 26 hours of travelling, capped by a steep climb from the coastal city of Port Alegre through a terrain dominated by thick vegetation.

During the course of my visit, I taste a series of sparkling wines, a cabernet sauvignon, a merlot blended with tannat and an egiodola, a French grape with an original cherry aroma. The wines are refreshingly high in acidity, with ripe fruit, perhaps lacking a little complexity on the palate but reminiscent in character of those produced in the Loire or Portugal. It is the sparkling wines that really excite; rapacious in acidity, they have a fresh, clean, appley character with a frothy mousse.

Brazil is not known for its wine. Tropical rainforests, beach-volleyball, the Girl from Ipanema, yes, but chardonnay? It doesn't sound right. Yet venture to the country's far south, well below the equatorial jungle and the Carnival-fuelled streets of Rio de Janeiro, and you will find five wine-growing regions producing clean, modern, fruit-driven wines. The heartbeat of these is Vale dos Vinhedos, an appellation officially recognised by the EU, which produces merlot to a standard of good Cru Bourgeois.

Up in the north, amid the arid plains of the So Francisco valley, is one of the oddest viticultural projects in the world. Thanks to the nearby So Francisco river and a series of huge irrigation pumps, the riverbanks are ripe with grapes and melons. With 12 hours of sunlight a day for 300 days a year, and a wonderful, lush, warm atmosphere, winemakers are able to harvest every month. The absence of a winter means the vines never stop producing, enabling growers to enjoy multiple harvests from different plots.

Despite this futuristic project, Brazil's wine industry can trace its origins back to the late 19th century, when a wave of Italian immigrants, mainly from the northern Veneto region, arrived here with clones of European grape varieties. There are more than 900 wineries in Brazil today, producing 350 million litres a year, making the country the fifth-largest producer in the southern hemisphere. But it has been only in the last ten years that Brazil's industry, spurred on by the success of neighbours Argentina and Chile, has decided to focus on the export market. The first bottles are beginning to creep into the UK via Waitrose and the Essex-based Coe Vintners (which employs Brazil's only Master of Wine, Vianna Junior). But if the quality of such wineries as Casa Valduga, Dachery, Casa Perini, Miolo, Lidio Carraro and Rio Sol is anything to go by, it will not be long before these wines are flying off the shelves.

My experience of Fenavinho, Brazil's national wine festival, is that while the still wines are good, the sparkling wines have really excellent potential. So could they eventually be the champagne of the Americas? Quite possibly.

2004 Miolo Lote 43, Vale dos Vinhedos, Serra Gaucha, Brazil, 12.5%, 20

Vianna Junior MW says this is on a par with a good Cru Bourgeois. It certainly has nice grippy tannins, familiar blackcurrant fruit and a strong, mineral character on the palate, rounded off by a spicy kick.

2005 Miolo Millesime, Vale dos Vinhedos, Serra Gaucha, Brazil, 13%, 15

Sparkling wines are undoubtedly the highlight of Brazil's vineyards. Millesime is produced in conjunction with Michel Rolland, and is a blend of pinot noir and chardonnay. The acidity and bite surprise with their quality.

2006 Rio Sol Cabernet Sauvignon/Shiraz, Vale do So Francisco, Pernambuco, Brazil, 13%, 5.49

This wine is made closer to the equator than any other. A bold, deep colour gives way to ripe, balanced, authentic-tasting wine. Close your eyes and you would be hard pushed to guess this was from Brazil. Regardless of how they are produced, the quality is there.

Stockists: Waitrose (www.waitrose.com); Coe Vintners (020 8551 4966, www.coevintners.com)