Magnolias and Slavic aperitif

Where did the idea for Brito Farm come from?

From a personal need to do something more, hmm… romantic. If you ask a winemaker why they started a winery, they will probably answer the same as us, that it is a personal spiritual need to work with the earth, with taste, and to feed people with good things. Personally, it saves me a little in a very unpredictable future and various fears.

What does the name mean?

Brito is the surname of our micro-family, and farm comes from the need to settle in the countryside.

But you grew up in the countryside… You come from the Ziółek family, which is so famous among Warsaw foodies…

That’s true, but then I went to Poznań to study design, and then abroad for a while. Then my husband and I started to miss nature and decided to return to the countryside. We bought a hectare of land near Lublin. So it’s a bit too much for a hobby, and not enough for commercial vegetable cultivation… So for now, we’re planting herbs and shrubs for fermentation.

What do you ferment?

Mainly herbs, those that grow here or at my parents’ place among the weeds. These fields are terribly overgrown, very un-Instagrammable, but the herbs grow much better than on larger, prettier farms. My favorite for fermentation is hyssop, supposedly the favorite of the historical Jesus, but I find it very difficult to convince customers at the market to buy it. However, everyone likes it in a fermented drink, as it adds character and depth. We have more ingredients like this. We also add wild-growing things, root vegetables, herbs, and juices that are always made from fruit, never from concentrate.

As far as I remember, you worked with scoobie when you were in college. You tried to make organic material from fermentation mother…

Yes, and we’re still doing it. Last year, we produced paper in an industrial paper mill for one of the international corporations. That’s not what we’re talking about today, so I won’t go into detail, but slowly and consistently, we are pursuing our goal, which is for nanocellulose to improve the properties of materials and reduce not only environmental costs. Ultimately, none of the consumers will know that our product is in the packaging they bought, and that will be a success.

Let’s go back to fermentation. Do you remember your first time?

Of course! I made my first kombucha 10 years ago. At first, it was just herbal kombucha—my way of earning some extra money during my student vacation at my parents’ farm. Then there was a long history with fermentation, including participation in
the design and production of a full-scale bioreactor and work on the industrial-scale production of nanocellulose and its implementation in packaging materials with corporations from the US, China, and France – generally a lot of spreadsheets (laughs). Brito Farm is my romantic escape from what I do every day.

Successful and unsuccessful fermentations?

Hmmm, it’s hard to say, the unsuccessful ones are always useful when setting up processes, but there are fewer and fewer of them over time.

It must be difficult to start industrial production, right?

We made Batch 14 Herbal and seasonal Magnolia for distributors in Poland and abroad – over 1,000 bottles, so anything is possible, but you can’t use “cheaper” or easier ingredients or methods just to lower the price of the product. We focus on taste and we don’t skimp on that, and to do it on a large scale, all we need are customers who understand that. I invite you to visit Vininova stores to see if we’ve succeeded.

Who designed the label? It has a Miyazaki cartoon style vibe, doesn’t it?

Early AI! (laughs). Probably from 2023. There are plans to involve artists in the collaboration, but for now, the character on the label and its green surroundings perfectly reflect what we want people to feel when drinking our wine.

You are the daughter of famous farmers – describe the advantages and disadvantages of this situation….

Since accepting the straw sticking out of my shoes, it’s been almost all praise (laughter). But seriously, the downsides include, for example, a lack of, hmm… familiarity with the world of wine and everything that surrounds it. Other than that, since leaving Poland, I’ve felt almost nothing but positives. I’ve simply learned to admit my ignorance. Just as we go abroad and sometimes explain our English by saying that we are from Poland and it is not our first language, I admit that I don’t know all the terms on a restaurant wine list, because I only started going to restaurants after I turned 20. I don’t mean that farmers don’t know how to use cutlery, but in my personal experience, it wasn’t a priority while I was growing up.

But you probably had contact with nature and fermentation from childhood. Did anyone ferment at your house?

Yes! There were always various jars and vats at home, as well as specific remedies given to us when we were sick. It’s so deeply ingrained, this production that involves growth and the use of the senses as tools – tasting things straight from the field, smells and textures, I try to convey this whole sensory library in my wines. In general, innocence, just like wine, usually expresses very strongly the personality of those who produce it, especially in the case of small producers. Here, everyone really has their own language, and this certainly connects traditional winemaking with this new field of wine proxy.

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