Ep. 199 Monty Waldin interviews Bernardo Pinto (Zahil Importadora) | Education meets Business

Italian wine podcast. Chinching with Italian wine people. This podcast is brought to you by Native Grape Odyssey. Native Grape Odyssey is an educational project financed by the European Union to promote European wine in Canada, Japan, and Russia. Enjoy. It's from Europe. Hello. This is it. I know my podcast. My name is Monte Gordon. My guest today is Bernardo Pinto. Bernardo lives in and is from Brazil, and he's the technical director of an import business called Zahil Import Adora. That's it. Yeah. Alright. Okay. So just tell me your early life from Brazil. Obviously, where were you where were you born? I was born in Belores, aren't they? Right. Okay. Which is, very humid place, isn't it? Human. No. Not not much. No. No. No. No. No. We have the Fiat there. So it's quite a well known place for add ins. Right. Relatively went on well in the world. Whereabouts is it in the middle of the country? Some thieves in Brazil, but six hundred kilometers away from San Paulo or five hundred from Rio. Is it on the coast then? No. No. It's not. It's is the state. It's like, general mines. So it's a mining area Right. Mountainous. Okay. So you mind mine rather than mining mining stuff? Oh, yeah. That's what I tried to do. So how did you get into to one line. I started working as a a waiter when I was still in school, and it went wild from there. I fell in love with wine, started studying, and then traveling, and then selling wine. So was that like a holiday job in a restaurant or something like that? Yes. Did you leave me did you bail out school early or She's not really. No. No. No. I did the whole thing. So you did the university? Yeah. Sort of. Yes. It's got astronomy, so it's not. Oh, okay. It's not like, physics. Why did you choose gastronomy? You're good. Do we did you like cooking? You I I do a bit was really involved with the whole restaurant wine food thing. So But why the where did that come from? Are your parents' great cooks? Not really. No. We always sit around the table to just chat and talk and live lives in our family or in our area, maybe, in minutes. They're not particularly involved with food, but we we eat a lot. Brian, okay. We're all quite it's still quite slim. I mean, you, you know, you sort of you know, you are. You've got a body. You could have you could look you could be rugby player. Could I? Yeah. You got kinda I'd like that. You know, you're quite a stocky lad, but you're not like overweight at all. I should have tried it. Yeah. And you could be father Christmas. You got a fantastic beard as well. Okay. So you got into food and wine. So what was your big break? Your first a proper job in the wine industry or the food and wine industry. I started organizing tastings because I knew how to organize events, food events. Have why I was used to do organized birthday parties and stuff. Something like that. Yeah. No. No. Just walking in a restaurant you have to learn to do whatever you need to because it's like it's like, I don't know, you have to improvise all the time. Yeah. Organize chaos? Yeah. So I started organizing wine tasting events without being actually in the wine trade. And I it was so interesting, and I could taste interesting things. So I started thirteen, and I went from there. How old were you at that time? Eighteen, seventeen. How old are you now? Thirty five. Okay. So, right, let's do the intervening seventeen years in the next five seconds. Okay. I started walking forward. This new to, then I started doing WSTT courses. And very quickly, I was invited to move to Sao Paulo and to sort of manage the the company's portfolio, the same company as Hill. So I've been there for twelve years now. Okay. So how does distribution work in in Brazil? Is it regional? Do you have national distributors or both? It's national in theory, but it's such a huge country that, it's quite localized. And since since, tax sations very complex in Brazil. It's getting more and more localised. Right. To simplify the paperwork. Yeah. And to avoid being too expensive. Right. Bringing in, wiser that become too expensive. So is it a very price sensitive market? Is that an all caps threes or at the high end? Or It was looking good a few years ago, but now we just went back to relatively your very cheap wine anyway. Because of the economy. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's bankrupt, isn't it, basically, Brazil. It's messy. I wouldn't say bankrupt because we've become more table in the last, maybe a couple of decades, but still it's quite messy. It's still a bit up and down. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So how does that affect your purchasing situation? Or you don't wanna hold too much inventory, I guess? For a few years, I stopped looking for new wines. So just trying to work with with what I had. We eliminated some for of the most expensive wines from our listens. You drank them, pretty much. Not all of it, but, a lot of it. And we started we moved to secondary areas when looking for new wines. So what is the secondary if you're talking about? So it helped give me that in an in an Italian contact? So let's say your to buy Bruno, you're by Roso. Is that the what you're saying? Oh, it wasn't that. I'm sorry. I need to say. Yeah. Instead of buying Tusk and SanJobese, we would buy Sanju. Probably. Yeah. Probably. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, maybe not such a stepwood, backward step. Definitely. The stepwood wax, I could say, so I'll say, backward step instead. Yeah. At least in the eyes of the public, it's a bit of, So it's very label driven then? Are there people very aware of the sort of brands and, perceived value in particular? Brands in a way that you could say that, areas of great varieties are brands in Brazil, so people do recognize those names and they stick to the names they know. So brand commercially commercial brands as well, but also great names in famous areas. So what's hot at the moment? You said there are economic pressures. So that's changed the way all the style of wines that you're showing. Well, what is working really well for you at the moment? Italian wine wise in Brazil. So pretty much there but we've we've been doing a nice, job with, New San Josele Romania. We have a couple of very good, wines from Abruzzo that work fine because they have the quality and they have the price. So works. It's a red wine and a white wine from a reach a famous region. It's a delviano and, Elviano. Yes. Yeah. So it works. We're just moving towards Babberta from outside the classic areas in Piamonte. So I'll turn but still with recognizable grape names or there was. Oh, what about the cuisine, I mean, those all of those were fairly sort of big wines. I mean, maybe the sangiovese do you remember can be a big one. It can not necessarily be one, but they're all very food friendly, as most, I think, Italian wines are. So what are people meeting with those kind of wines. So I think there's, three main things that we have to consider when we talk about food in Brazil. One is we do eat a lot of meat. Yes. So it works with those wines. So that's a lot often grilled. Is that correct? Barbecue. Yeah. Shochasco. We ate a lot of meat. Oh, you were gonna do it in south in south east area, but you're quite carnivorous? Oh, yes, definitely. Yeah. It was stocky lad. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's me. That used to be me. I'm trying to to it down for the for the world's sake, actually, for the Yeah. That should. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of grain is seven kilos of grain for one kilo of meat. Yeah. It's crazy in water as well. Yeah. But, well, we do eat a lot of meat. Okay. Then Italian cuisine is very strong in Brazil. There's a very strong influence from Italy, a lot of, descendants. So we do eat a lot of Italian food, let's say, pasta in many ways. So they're they have an affinity with the Italian wines. And then our, let's say, typical Brazilian food doesn't have to do, doesn't have a thing to do with, bread, balky wines. Okay. So two, what are what are typical Brazilian dishes then? Fish, pork, although you could have bread wine with pork. It's I don't know. Lots of vegetables, fruit, obviously. They steamed or boiled. Both and ottawhees as well. So many different ingredients, exotic, like, spicy things, or things that actually cannot mistociate your palate. Adise your palate. So they're gonna either deaden it or they can clean it up. Yeah. Just like you can take you can't taste anything or they clean your palate. They clean your palate. Yeah. Yeah. So that's a cleanser. In a way. Yes. But it's weird because it tastes weird. When contact with, with wine. It's not obvious to think about wine and those ingredients. So what about the what about the chance sales channels? I do when they buy wine or when people buy wine in Brazil, is it going to local wine shop or is it going to a local restaurant and ordering wine in a restaurant? Is there a big difference? Is there a big price differential between the margin or the actual price in a restaurant to, a shop? Oh, there is. Yes. So a big markup. There is a big markup for our standards? Well, that's sixty percent. Even more. One hundred percent is common. But that's, that's less than than other countries or the established countries for wine, but still, it makes a huge difference in Brazil because the base price is very high because we have a lot of tax and you have, but I imagine getting stuff to Brazil is a bit expensive as well, but It's quite expensive. Yes. But I have to say freight costs from Europe to a Brazilian port are about the same as freight costs from the port to the cities or or even less depending on where you're shipping. So it can be very expensive. And so it's a product for for the few. As most Brazilians don't have a lot of cash economic power. But there's a lot of people who actually have and are very interested in wine. So those guys would buy, yeah, on the every every but more and more they're buying in supermarkets because supermarkets actually have the wines now. They treat the wines relatively well now as Until the story them. Yeah. Yeah. And having fine selection quality wines, having somebody to help you with the wine, with picking the wines. We used to buy a lot from from the importers directly, but the proceedings are amongst amongst the most early the adopters of new technology. So twenty five percent of wine drinkers in Brazil actually buy online. Really? And that's the third market online in the world, not in volume, but in, percentage of buyers. Well, well. So there's, something like, US, Japan, in Brazil. So they're buying from local distributors, or they're buying from either the importers or local shops. Yes. So you can basically buy direct, you can import whine, put it in a warehouse, presumably there's some customs papers to do. Do you have to pay an import tax? You have to pay a lot of taxes, and you have to pay them upfront. So before they get inside the country, you have to pay everything, and you might get some credit back for being too many taxes when you nationalize it. Well, that's quite a good idea. If you have those upfront, you gotta pay the supplier Yeah. Winery, and then you gotta pay the transport, and you gotta pay the tax upfront. Yes. So the idea that almost as soon as that wine lands, you somebody that online can order it and pay you Yeah. And get it out and sell it. Yeah. That's true. Yeah. Do you mix a mix, a brazillian is very curious. They're like mixed cases or are they just like a wine where we had an ex x red, the multiple journey to him would just, well, have we'll order a box of that. Or do they want six of them, six whites? No. They they do mixed cases. They're buying. Yeah. To buy everything and just try to find things that they do that they'd like. And then they'll buy things that are at the right price point. There's a very price sensitive market. It it is. Okay. Yes. So if I'm an Italian producer, and I want to succeed in the Brazilian market, what am I the tips you're gonna give me. So first of all, you have to know what you want. So what's the type of distribution that you want to make, if you want to build a a name for your products for your company, or you just want to, get rid of volume, whatever. So you can pick a park because you have to pick a good partner. And obviously, there are people who don't know what they're doing. There are people that are not honest about what they're doing. So you have just to be careful and pick a good partner that will do the job that you want to to do. And you have to collaborate. You have to be there. Really? Brazil are very emotional as people might recall from, I don't know, football games or other things. Yeah. So we like people. We like the places we visit, and we tend to remember those people in those places. So people who go and and visit the country actually sell better just because they may just, yeah, personality. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's a bit like Italy. Right? Yeah. I think a little bit. I mean, yeah, I mean, there's, first initially, you could say that you have to win somebody's trust. Yeah. And the best way of doing that is with face to face, maybe it's very hard to build a rapport with somebody over email in Italy. I found. It's impossible, in fact. It's not that hard to make, friends with resilience, but you have to be there. You have to be seen. Okay. So where's the market gonna be in in five years time. All things going well for Italian wine. You're optimistic? I'll stop the elections. Yes. I have no idea. Yeah. No. Yes. I'm optimistic. Everything has changed for the better in the last year and a half, except for maybe the the political situation. We don't know. We're unsure. We're always unsure about that in Brazil, actually, so it's not a big change. I don't know. We're we've been most stable in the last two years. People are back to wine, people who who stop drinking wine every week. Let's a a back to drink green wine. I mean, it's beer it's beer much cheaper there. Oh, definitely. Yes. Alright. So, basically, if you can't afford wine, you're gonna go back to the beer. Oh, and, don't get me started on Casasa. Right. Okay. Which is a local spirit. Yeah. It's just so from sugar cane, and it can be very cheap because it's not very well regulated. Yeah. And they give you free aspens when you buy it as well. Yeah. Have a lot of water too. Yeah. I would recommend. That's what it pulls worth. But it's for the bad call there's very high quality Cashas anyway. But, yes, people would drink beer and they would drink Casasa, and there's a lot of competition. They're drinking, well, cocktails are a trend in Brazil as well, as in other places. So if you're in Sao Paulo, you'd be amazed with the quality of the cocktail bars, but that's steering people away from wine too, except that, actually Sherry's very trendy amongst, bartenders. So we're trying to deal with that as well. Yeah. Sherry's Sherry's bouncing back, isn't it? Yeah. As of count, almost like as a brand? Not for the general public in Brazil, but the bottom. Yeah. The gates. The gates. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the wine cakes. So what what I mean, the the wine geek wine geeks in the in the trade, if you walk in and say you've got some I've got some Italian wine to sell, what are they hoping that's gonna be in your salesman suitcase? Are they looking for the those, the burritos, or they're looking for, I don't know, out of the way native grape varieties that nobody's ever heard of? I mean, I have to tell you, the one gig in Brazil are at the same level as one gigs wherever I do all. So you have people who know the details about winemaking and about the vineyards and about whatever you want from the shoe size of the winemaker. Really? Yeah. So the true geeks would be thrilled with orange wines, with non sulfur wines, with new areas, I don't know, pretty much everything that's going on that's trendy elsewhere. So it does work, but on a very, very tiny scale, it's a niche, but it's there. A niche within a niche within a niche. Yeah. Definitely. And then you have a lot of people who travel around the world and they go and buy wine. So you have very important clients for famous wine shops in the UK, in the US, in Italy as well. So there's people who actually are very, very deep in the wine. So final question, when you were in Italy, what the favorite, your favorite region to visit? It could be the landscape, it could be the wine, it could be the food. I was going to say Tuscany. Mhmm. So I have to say Tuscany. It's my first thought. Really? Yeah. Okay. And your favorite wines in Tuscany are? He's gonna say Bruno, can't take Vasquez. I don't know. Brunell, if it's aged, yes, definitely center busy, but yeah. Honestly, it's tuscany because of the context. Whereas the last point is what you mean landscape, the villages, the food, the people, they're very welcoming. It's a lovely place to be, and you have very good wine. But then if you ask me, the first wine that comes to mind, when I think of its if I want to just have whatever I want, it's definitely nebula. Right. Okay. It's probably parallel, but auto auto nebulas as well. Cool. Okay. I wanna say thanks to my guest today, but Thank you so much for having me. Yeah. I know it's been great. Doing often interview people who AR from Brazil obviously live there and breathe Brazil. And, it's a massive, massive, massive country. Yes. And it's been on a bit of a rollerco to recently politically. So let's hope everything sorts itself out. And the wine market there gets back to a bit of stability, which will make your life easier. We can get it back again and see how things change in the next few years. Thank you so much. Take it easy. This podcast has been brought to you by Native grape Odyssey, discovering the true essence of high quality wine from Europe. Find out more on native grape Odyssey dot e u. Enjoy. It's from Europe. Follow Italian wine podcast on Facebook and Instagram.