We need to go back to 2007 or 2008, when Laureano Serres and Joan Ramón Escoda set off on a wine journey in the Loire Valley with Anthony Tortul and Rémi Pujol, four natural wine growers. On their return to the Béziers area, during a tasting with distributors and importers that lasted late into the night, one of the winegrowers asked: "You don't like my wines? You keep saying brutal!" in front of some rather sceptical potential buyers. "Of course we do, they are brutal!" replied Joan Ramon, in French. There and then, our four companions decided to create the Brutal Wine Corporation, where each would make a cuvée called Brutal!!! So there they were, in the middle of the night, in front of Anthony Tortul's computer, designing a label for wines with no other obligation than to be natural, without added sulfites. No trademark registered; everyone is free to appropriate the name and visual, in total alignment with the philosophy of free wines: grapes grown using agroecological principles, hand-harvested, and aged without chemical or mechanical intervention.
Since then, Brutal wines, still and sparkling, have been made all over the world. The movement began in Catalonia and France, and continues in Spain with Cris Vanyó in Carrícola, Mariano Taberner in Requena, Susana and Juan from Pigar, Roger Diaz of Les Foes in Castelló. And since natural wine knows no borders, we find Brutal from Valentina Passalacqua in Puglia (Italy) and from Stéphanie and Eduard Tscheppe-Eselböck in Austria.
Beyond the discourse of sommeliers, it is the identity and singularity of this wild idea that makes it great: living and free wines, "a gaudir" as they say in Valencian.
Es Brutal, by Romain Cole, published by Cambourakis (2021). Thanks to Laureano Serres for his help with the writing.