A conversation with Bar Brutal’s Stefano Colombo

I was coming back and forth to Barcelona for a design studio I was working at in Milan. Then I fell in love with the city and with a girl, of course. When we opened Xemei, I was 28.

Twenty years ago, Spain didn’t really have a natural, or even an organic, wine scene. I had to bring the bottles over from Italy. Xemei was a wild place that was open late into the night. Post-Covid you can go out in Spain at 7:00pm to have dinner, but that wasn’t the case back then. In those years our last reservation was midnight, and we were always crowded. With no place to sit, people used car hoods as tables, and dishes were everywhere. The party kept going long after we closed. The big problem? I didn’t know who or how to charge, or even if I wanted to charge. Max was a practicing architect and chef in Venice. I called him and said, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong. The place is working, but I’m not paying the bills’. He came over to help with the chaos.

Eventually. Design teaches you how to build systems—kitchen flow, service, structure. Even creativity needs a framework.

It was amazing. We were supposed to have 800 people, but in the end, we had more than 2,000 crowding the courtyard. Sometime in the evening it rained, but it was no problem. We covered the DJ with a canopy, and the crowd stayed almost until dawn. They kept on screaming for more freedom, more music, more wine. We live for exactly that kind of moment when there’s a connection with others who share the same emotion—that’s worth everything, as it is for all artists, musicians, and writers. 

It’s our culture to sit down, drink together, and share moments—expression through wine and food—and it is important especially now, when so few people are connecting. Every other young person has their ears plugged with headphones. They’re not listening, not connecting—they’re looking at their phones. This is why I don’t have Instagram. 

Years ago, the office put Instagram on my phone, and I was scrolling like a monkey. I thought, ‘I stopped drugs only to get addicted to social media?’ My brain got really engaged and I couldn’t stop it. I’m a compulsive reader and that’s more important, so I got off within three days.

My first hospitality job was with a very eccentric, famous sommelier in Venice. He had no menu, no prices—total chaos. One day, he’d charge 100 bucks for a bottle of wine, the next day 200 for the same bottle. Winemakers were always around, and that’s where it began for me. I soon was attracted to the political side of wine through viticulture. This was in the late ‘90s, and I would protest with Terra Trema against the use of pesticides and herbicides. We took part in proper riots right outside Vinitaly in Verona—small left-wing farmers up against big companies. My brother and I were there, making pasta e fagioli for the demonstrators. This was the Berlusconi era, and we were fighting against the regime. When you’re young, you want to change the world—if you’re not against this shit when you’re in your 20s, then when?

From the beginning, wine was political. When natural wine finally took off, it had the feel of ‘them against us’.

Yes. 

Joan Valencia used to come to Xemei and say, ‘You need to have a better wine selection’. At that point, I didn’t really know that natural wine was starting in Spain. He took me to a party thrown by a winemaker in Priorat. There were a lot of young producers there who would later become famous like Arianna Occhipinti from Sicily. That was also where I met the now-prominent Catalan winemakers Joan Ramon and Laureano Serres, and I was like, ‘Who the fuck are these guys?’

In 2013, Joan Valencia’s girlfriend was running a shop that was about to be sold and he said, ‘I need a showroom for people to see these wines. Let’s buy it’. I agreed, ‘Yeah, let’s do it’. We put money in for the renovation, and there wasn’t a whole lot left over for funding the business.

Massimo Marchiori had his first vintage of Partida Creus. He was a Xemei customer and he had a lot of bottles he couldn’t sell. He said to me, ‘Why don’t you take all the bottles?’ He needed cash to make it to the next vintage, and offered me a ridiculously low price—three, four euros a bottle for 2,000 bottles. I needed wine for Brutal, so I agreed. A lot of them were refermenting in a crazy way, but we did it. When our reputation took off, Catalan winemakers were always coming to ask us to carry their wine, but that early generation struggled because, even as there were more and more winemakers, few local places sold their wine. Most drove 15 hours to French wine salons to sell six cases—it was a difficult time for them.

It wasn’t a goal, but now it’s kind of crazy that you can go to New York or Tokyo and restaurants have a full page with Catalan wine. Now natural wine is everywhere in Spain, even in traditional, conservative regions.

Okay, so Rioja is not easy, but Galicia? Yes. Gredos? Yes. In the South? Yes. We were very lucky with Bar Brutal. Sure, we had a catchy name, but we were also in Barcelona, where everybody wants to come. At the beginning, it was cheaper to have a whole weekend in Barcelona than to have one nice dinner in Copenhagen. We had a lot of people from the north of Europe who came here. We had a strong relationship with winemakers on the French Catalan side, and, between that and the relationship we built with winemakers at wine fairs throughout the world, everybody wanted to come here to see Brutal. 

At the beginning it was just me, but now the new kids working in Brutal have their own close, personal relationship with winemakers. They’re always coming in and suggesting some new discovery—‘I found this wine!’—and it’s great that they have this kind of involvement. The only thing that I truly insist on for wines at the bar is that we must feel the wine’s energy. 

Sometimes the energy gets lost when you focus on the aesthetics, the wine’s elegance. We’re seeing more people who feel that if it’s not 100 percent natural, it’s not a problem, but for us, the most important elements are honesty and energy—the wine must be completely alive. The new sommeliers seem to miss this. 

For example, so many people are focused on the new and more natural wines out of Piemonte. Sure, they are beautiful, but I can only feel the life in about five percent of the new flock. What is important in Bar Brutal is the wine’s life, it’s energy—not just the precision. I’m not saying that I can’t drink anything that’s not 100 percent natural, but we need to be clear about what’s natural and what’s not.

I can enjoy a glass that has a little sulphur, but I can’t drink the bottle. It’s not a matter of taste—it’s about the energy. Even when you add something as low as 20ppm, it’s important to be transparent. I know making wine is difficult, and making great wine is a nightmare. If you must medicate the wine, okay, just be honest and don’t hide it. However, if you do it to put a cosmetic on the wine? That’s the line for me. 

We struggled for the first six months—50 percent of the clients didn’t want to pay for the wine. They would say, ‘Oh, I don’t like this one. Can I have another?’ Then they didn’t like the second. I mean 15 years ago, our four euro, unfiltered, cloudy wines were competing with places that served shitty Rioja for 1.5 euros, so many people who came in were shocked and were like, ‘What the fuck?’

The beginning was so tough. I had to tell my staff that we didn’t have enough money—they might not get paid. I said, ‘If you’re going to give it a go for another six months, drink whatever you want. You have the key to the cellar. Drink well’. And they did! And so it started, people opened bottles, shared it without paying, getting drunk during service. 

Yes! People came for the show, but not all of them understood the wines. A waiter would say, ‘Oh, you don’t like the wine? Okay, I’ll drink it then’. Essentially, everything that got sent back to the bar was drunk by the staff. Curiously, when we stopped caring about the business, that’s when it started to thrive.

Yes, but they also started to be curious and more adventurous. They would try anything and ask questions, good questions. ‘I want to try this thing. What are they doing with that wine?’ The enthusiasm was intense. It was as if they were on drugs, but it was natural wine. 

Now, the customer is completely different—the ‘newness’ is gone. They understand the wines, and they know a lot. We don’t get a lot of locals anymore. Mostly we get tourists and people who book two, three weeks, even months and months, in advance.

You used to have a lot of good, cheap wine at an entry level price—now entry is 28 euros, 30 euros. The other night I was with Sam, the photographer, you know him right?

We were having a wine made by Eloi Cedo in Mallorca. There was something off with the wine, and it didn’t taste the way it should. We were going back and forth, and so I called Eloi and he said, ‘It’s overcooked, but it’s a 10 euro bottle’. 

I was like, ‘Man, you’re right’. He is a very small producer, and when the wine is really good, it has to cost 20 euros a bottle. He said, ‘When people start to realise the real price of wine, how can anyone afford it?’ We need to have wine people can afford to drink. Maybe a winemaker has got to have two jobs to survive? I don’t know the answer. 

This is true—even the winemakers are in a new era. We are still committed to our values, to our philosophy, but Brutal has evolved. If you think about the natural wine movement, it’s kind of like music. At the beginning, it was punk. Then punk became normalised and so did natural wine. It evolved into a kind of pop music. Now, if you listen to the Clash on the radio, you don’t think, ‘Oh my God, what is that?’ Natural wine doesn’t seem shocking either. You can’t be punk, just to be punk. Also, my staff is more sensible these days. 

Yet, it is still about wine, even though most of our diners want a proper food and wine experience over the three hours. At the same time, there are people who come in for a little snack and one glass. To be democratic, we serve both. Sure, there will be some crazy nights, some crazy parties, but on the whole, we have a new, calmer direction. It doesn’t have to be rock and roll every night if it’s not the night. Our clients are more wine connoisseurs—they have more knowledge than ten years ago. 

A lot of things change. Hospitality is a young man’s game, so I want to embrace this new moment. I think there’s a new generation that’s getting a little more heart and elevating the quality of the things that they’re doing. Wine wise, it’s getting so much better. 

That said, we still have waves of young crowds who come just to take a picture of the orange wine and drink pét-nat—if it’s an orange pét nat, it’s like they see God.