In 2021, Romain Cole, journalist and photographer, published a book of interviews with natural winemakers from southern and northern Catalonia entitled "Es Brutal" (it's brutal), "Who acts with violence, who lacks delicacy" according to the French Larousse dictionary. But where does this term common to so many languages come from, used by the supporters of natural wines and found on social networks and even on wine labels?
We have to go back to 2007 or 2008 when Laureano Serres and Joan Ramón Escoda undertook an ecological journey in the Loire with Anthony Tortul and Rémi Pujol, four natural winemakers. On their return to the outskirts of Béziers, during a late night tasting with distributors and importers, one of the winemakers asked, "Don't you like my wines? You keep saying brutal!" in front of the somewhat dubious potential buyers. "Of course, they are brutal!", replies Joan Ramón in French. So the four winemakers decided to create the Brutal Wine Corporation, where each of them would make a wine called Brutal !!! Here are our four friends 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 sulphites. No brand registration, everyone is free to appropriate the name and the visual in total alignment with the philosophy of the free wines: grapes cultivated according to agroecological principles, harvested by hand and matured without chemical or mechanical intervention.
Since then, many Brutal !!! wines have been produced, both still and sparkling, first in Catalonia and then in France with Jean-Louis Pinto in Ariège, Jean-Luc and Michèle Shaeringer, Claude Staub, Jean-Marc Dreyer in Alsace, Patrick Boujou in Puy-de-Dôme and also in the rest of Spain with Cristobal Vanyó in Ontinyent, the master of bubbles Mariano Taberner in Requena, Roger Diaz in Castelló, Ismael Gozado in Castilla y León, Ismael Gozalo in Segovia, Antonella Gerosa and Massimo Marchiori in the Penedès and Antonio Vílchez in Andalusia. And because natural wine has no borders, we find Brutal !!! wines at Valentina Passalacqua in Puglia, Italy, or at Stéphanie and Eduard Tscheppe-Eselböck in Austria.
Let's hope that no one has been left out, but it is likely that new winemakers will join the ranks. New vintages that will make new stories to tell our children, because beyond the speeches of sommeliers, it is the identity and singularity of this idea that makes it great, living and free wines "a gaudir" as they say in Catalan.
És brutal
La Catalogne à travers ses vigneron.nes natures, by Romain Cole, published by Cambourakis.
Thanks to Laureano for his help in writing this article.