WTN: 2006 Bettu Ancelotta (and other wines from Brazil)

2006 Vilmar Bettu Ancelotta 12.9%
Marcia and I spent the turn of the year in the Serra Gaucha, the main wine producing region of Brazil, in the southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul, bordering Argentina and Uruguay. Besides visiting a part of the country to which I had never been, I was curious to get a sense of where the Brazilian wine industry is heading, since it is evolving rapidly. Expectations were not particularly high for the wine, so we spent a lot of time on other things, but I managed to produce 73 tasting notes from 12 wineries.

I was surprised to find that two garagistes (well-known in the small Brazilian wine geek community) are producing “world class” wines, so the most important conclusion of the trip was that this is possible in Brazil. Their names are Vilmar Bettu and Marco Danielle. There are a few similarities – both are of Italian origin and use little or no SO2 – but, for the most part, they are a study in contrasts, evidence that there is no “right way” to make wine.

Yesterday Marcelo Maia Rosa told me he was going to post a note on Danielle's 2007 Minimus Anima, which he had just opened, so Marcia suggested we open a Bettu so that both producers would have notes posted here.

Vilmar Bettu is around 60, a curious hillbilly mix of soft-spoken, humble, eccentric and stubborn, and has been making wine in his farm near the city if Garibaldi since the early 1980s. He grows over 30 varietals and uses whichever ones ripen adequately each given year to make different mono-varietals and blends (the latter can be whimsical or driven by what’s available). There is no de-stemming and all bunches are foot stomped by the family. The resulting must is filtered with sieves and stored in old wooden barrels after achieving considerable extraction.

The Ancelotta is an unspecified blend of Ancelotta, Malbec and Merlot. Intense aromas of ripe cherry, with light notes of oak, sousbois, leather, and smoked meats. Good acidity, firm but pleasant tannins, but slightly hot for my palate (tastes higher than 12.9%). A wine with complex personality and structure, significantly finer than the top wines that I have tasted from commercial Brazilian wineries.

Oswaldo, there is my relate from yesterday.
Just hope to try a Bettu as soon as possible. Wonderful and unique! Thaks for the note!

Yesterday I went to a restaurant with my grandparents to eat a good steak, and my grandfather ask me to chose the wine.... so....
Just to everybody knows, he was my first teacher and encourager of my completely crazy wine lover time, but now he is just drinking new world style wines. I think that he lost the patient to find goods wines from France and Italy here in Brazil, without loosing a lot of money... And this is a contrast for me... so as a completely crazy and humorist person, he just want high alcohol and big jimmy fruits, and the only thing that can distract more him than this is little photos of beautiful womans.... hehehe. So I chose this wine to joke a little bit with he. The label is a picture of an employed from the winemaker, and the photo is also from the winemaker. Totally bizarre, but I now that was a vary good wine. And when the bottle arrived he just forget that was a Brazilian wine... he has a bias with Brazilian wine that is irreversible.

Minimus Anima 2007 12,6% Encruzilhada do Sul, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.
Cabernet Sauvignon (35%) + Tannat supertardia (35%)+ Alicante Bouschet (20%) + Merlot (10%)
2600 bottles made.
Low SO2
no oak

After all, I taste the wine and was just amazing. A funky nose of violet, leather and a beautiful blackberry. In the and the lovely nose of epoxy (common to me in low so2 wines and i still looking for the correct name for it). In the mouth is silky, very gastronomic, good acidity. A little bit of secondary fermentation, but that’s goes away after a couple minutes. The bottle was empty vary fast.
So if you have the opportunity, just tried it! For sure! I old style wine "rainbow wine" that make you just love this all wine searcher.

[Jenise]

Marcelo and Oswaldo, great notes on something I've never read about before, Brazilian wine. Would love to taste such a thing. And Marcelo, be kind to your grandpapa, I am convinced from watching my elders age that our tastebuds lose acuity with time. My grandmother at 60? Her favorite foods were fudgesicles, cheese enchiladas and roast turkey (not that these are gourmet foods, Grammy was always a farm girl with simple ideas.) At 80? Her favorite foods were salt, grease and sugar. That is, it didn't matter what the underlying edible matter was, as long as flavorwise it hit one of those huge flavor notes. Under that scenario, your grandather's current preferences probably make perfect sense. We should all dread the day it happens to us!

Good point, Jenise, not only does age change the palate, so does the increasing reliance on meds for this and that...

Marcelo suggested we adopt a structure similar to Open Mike for this thread, which makes sense. I think that makes sense, given the limited interest in the topic. That way we accumulate all the information in one thread. So I'm going to edit the title to reflect that.

To complement what Marcelo wrote: Marco Danielle, who makes Minimus Anima, is a sophisticated former professional photographer, in his early 40s, who began to make wine in 2002 after a period of living in Paris. He is outspoken, an ideologue and evangelist for his wines, which run counter to the international style/new world model. Danielle works mostly with purchased grapes, de-stemmed by hand at low temperatures, using sterile equipment and maximum hygiene in order to minimize the need for SO2. He is not organic or biodynamic because he has to buy his grapes, but recently he became a partner in a vineyard, and is headed that way. Danielle is familiar with the latest trends in French natural wine, and speaks eloquently about the drawbacks of SO2. Unlike Bettu, Danielle only uses a few varietals, all of them French (CS, CF, Merlot, Tannat and Chardonnay), as monos or blends. He recently made a pinot noir rosé and a zero SO2 chardonnay. A winemaker to watch.

[Jenise]

Good point, Jenise, not only does age change the palate, so does the increasing reliance on meds for this and that...

Hard to imagine the time in life coming where we might actually appreciate Yellow Tail, isn't it?

2002 Vilmar Bettú Nebbiolo Vale dos Vinhedos 14.0%
Two weeks ago I had the temerity to say to Mauro Mascarello, of Giuseppe Mascarello, that there was a very good Nebbiolo made in Brazil. After our Piedmont experience, we thought it would be interesting to try it again.

Deep color, very inky. Initial aromas are cherry and dishrag, followed by sousbois, herbs, leather and spices. Fruit is vibrant, and so is the acidity. Tannins are not as powerful as a typical Barolo's, but are still quite grippy. The wine evolves throughout the meal, developing new aromas and flavors, always retaining a keen acidity and an excellent balance between that and the fruit. It feels vibrant, alive, like a low SO2 wine is supposed to be. I've also never seen so much sediment, as if the wine has been lying all this time on its own bed of lees. When we tried this at the winery last December, we judged it our favorite Brazilian wine so far. Nothing here to change that.

The state of Rio Grande do Sul, the principal winemaking state in Brazil, was primarily colonized by Italians. This wine is an eloquent tribute to that heritage.