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Mendall Brutal 2020
S$69.00
Appellation: Tarragona
A blend of Carignan and Garnacha.
The Mendall Brutal is fresh with a higher acidity and lower levels of alcohol than other vintages due to the weather during the harvest time. Only 200 bottles were produced from this vintage.
Considered one of Catalunya’s natural wine pioneers, Laureano Serres farms six hectares of vineyards spread over parcels in El Pinell. From the beginning, Laureano was committed to working with organic grapes and wild fermentation. He makes a large range of wines with nothing added!
Brutal is a Spanish expression that means that something is more than great, super great. This idea for identifying a cuvée with this name started with a conversation four winemakers had several years ago in France. Laureano Serres and Joan Ramon Escoda got together with Remi Pujol and Antony Tortul at Tortul’s winery and kept using their Catalan dialect and slang calling it “Brutal", similar to "dope", "dank", or "sick" in English.
Antony, who is French, thought they were saying the wine was garbage when it actually meant it was very good in Catalan. In the confusion, he went upstairs and made a label called it “Brutal” and brought it down to them.
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The idea behind Brutal wine is that it must be based on a zero/zero principle. Zero additives and Zero reductives meaning nothing is to be added nor taken out from the entire process. The grapes are grown organically or biodynamically and spontaneously fermented with natural yeasts. There are no added sulfites and no fining and filtering are carried in the wine before bottling. The winemaker's role in the process is minimal. In the universe of natural wines, Brutal sits right at the top of the movement.
Brutal is similar to an open source software. No one owns the Brutal label but it is conferred by existing recognised Brutal producers to other producers who adhere to the principle behind the wine. From the original quartet of Laureano Serres, Joan Ramon Escoda, Remi Poujol and Antony Tortul, there are now about 60 Brutal producers in the world. Each producer can only have 1 Brutal vintage release a year and it is meant to signify that producer's most experimental bottling of that vintage. The Brutal label typically shows the Grim Reaper with a sickle to SO2 (chemical name for Sulphur Dioxide). The label may also show the words "Brutal Wine Corporation" which isn't a real organisation but rather as mentioned, a recognition producers confer to others on the same wavelength as them.
