The History of Wine in Brazil

Brazil is famous for many things, but rarely for wine — yet it is one of South America’s major producers, with a history stretching back nearly five centuries and a modern reputation built, surprisingly, on sparkling wine. Its story runs from a colonial ban on winemaking to Italian immigrants who turned the southern hills green with vines¹.

A colony forbidden to make wine

Vines arrived with the earliest Portuguese settlers, planted on the coast near São Vicente around 1532. But the colony’s wine never flourished, and in 1739 Portugal simply banned grape-growing and winemaking in Brazil to protect its own exports — a prohibition that lasted until Brazilian independence in 1822. For nearly three centuries, Brazil was a land where wine could barely be made at all¹.

The Italians who made the hills bloom

The real birth of Brazilian wine came with people, not policy. From the 1870s, waves of poor Italian immigrants — many from the vineyards of the Veneto and Trentino — settled the cool, hilly Serra Gaúcha of Rio Grande do Sul. They cleared the forest, planted vines (at first the hardy American Isabella), and built a wine culture in their new home that endures four generations later².

Vale dos Vinhedos

At the centre of it all lies the Vale dos Vinhedos, the “valley of the vineyards,” whose Italian names and stone wineries still echo the old country. In 2002 it became the first Brazilian region to win a protected geographical indication, and in 2012 the first to be raised to the more demanding rank of Denominação de Origem — Brazil’s answer to a French appellation³.

Brazil’s sparkling surprise

Brazil’s great strength turned out to be bubbles. The Serra Gaúcha’s high altitude and humid, changeable climate give fresh, high-acid grapes ideally suited to sparkling wine, and Brazilian espumante — made by both the traditional and tank methods — now wins international medals and comparisons with Champagne and Prosecco alike. It has become the country’s calling card⁴.

Brazil’s bubbles have quietly become some of the best-value sparkling wines in the world.— on Brazilian espumante⁴

Wine on the equator

Brazil also does something almost no one else can: it grows wine in the tropics. In the São Francisco Valley of the arid north-east, close to the equator, irrigated vines never truly go dormant and can be coaxed into two or more harvests every year — a radical, sun-drenched contrast to the temperate south⁵.

A wine country comes of age

Rio Grande do Sul still makes the great majority of Brazil’s wine, but the whole industry has matured, trading bulk Isabella for fine vinifera grapes and serious ambition. Once an afterthought, Brazilian wine — and above all its sparkling — is now taken seriously on the world stage, the unexpected achievement of a nation better known for coffee and sun⁶.

Frequently asked questions

Read more

• Brazil’s tropical São Francisco Valley
• Portugal, the colonial motherland
• The sparkling tradition Brazil joined

References

1. BIO Web of Conferences (OIV 2017) — Wines of Brazil: From the past to the future. www.bio-conferences.org ↩
2. Modern Italy (Cambridge University Press) — The historical trajectory of Italian colonos in Rio Grande do Sul. www.cambridge.org ↩
3. Wine-Searcher — Vale dos Vinhedos, Serra Gaúcha. www.wine-searcher.com ↩
4. Coravin — Brazilian Wine: Exploring the Vibrant Wines of Brazil. www.coravin.com ↩
5. Wines of Brasil (Ibravin) — Brazilian Wine Regions. www.winesofbrasil.com ↩
6. Encyclopaedia Britannica — Rio Grande do Sul. www.britannica.com ↩

Recommended reading

Vintage: The Story of Wine
Hugh Johnson
Sets Brazil and South America within the global movement of vine and immigrant.

A Short History of Wine
Rod Phillips
Good on how European immigrants carried wine to the New World.

As an Amazon Associate, This Day in Wine History earns from qualifying purchases. Book recommendations are chosen independently.