Butiquin Wollstein, Blumenau
Blumenau is like a Ballerina in a boxing ring. It’s jarring. It doesn’t belong. It is a European looking town smack-bang in the middle of Brazil. Wooden clad German style houses with steep pitched roofs line the Amazon-like mud-brown Rio Itajai-Acu which flows through the heart of town.
We were searching Blumenau for its renowned German style lagers when we stumbled across Fabio and his bar, Butiquin Wollstein. Walking into Butiquin Wollstein feels like walking into a Picasso painting. Time stops and straight lines bend. The place is a work of art.
Fabio was a big athletic guy with an even bigger personality. A former Brazilian handball champion, he was reminiscent of Fabio’s past – I can’t believe it’s not butter.
When we asked for beer he scoffed. ‘No, my friends, you need caipirinhas.’ He was also a smooth salesman like his namesake. We didn’t question him, just nodded. He proceeded to mix caipirinha’s like a man possessed. ‘Lime, lemon, mango, peach, passionfruit. Take your pick my friends.’
The alcoholic base of a caipirinha is cachaça, a spirit made from sugarcane with varying degrees of refinement. Fabio utilised a high octane local cachaça, a roughly distilled, crude form of ethanol with properties similar to the rocket fuel NASA used to propel Apollo 13 into the atmosphere.
We sampled every variety of caipirinha on the menu with no thought of tomorrow. Unfortunately, tomorrow came, like it always does, and half-blind, comprehensively poisoned, we said goodbye to Blumenau and its sly-grog in search of the next cocktail.
We were searching Blumenau for its renowned German style lagers when we stumbled across Fabio and his bar, Butiquin Wollstein. Walking into Butiquin Wollstein feels like walking into a Picasso painting. Time stops and straight lines bend. The place is a work of art.
Fabio was a big athletic guy with an even bigger personality. A former Brazilian handball champion, he was reminiscent of Fabio’s past – I can’t believe it’s not butter.
When we asked for beer he scoffed. ‘No, my friends, you need caipirinhas.’ He was also a smooth salesman like his namesake. We didn’t question him, just nodded. He proceeded to mix caipirinha’s like a man possessed. ‘Lime, lemon, mango, peach, passionfruit. Take your pick my friends.’
The alcoholic base of a caipirinha is cachaça, a spirit made from sugarcane with varying degrees of refinement. Fabio utilised a high octane local cachaça, a roughly distilled, crude form of ethanol with properties similar to the rocket fuel NASA used to propel Apollo 13 into the atmosphere.
We sampled every variety of caipirinha on the menu with no thought of tomorrow. Unfortunately, tomorrow came, like it always does, and half-blind, comprehensively poisoned, we said goodbye to Blumenau and its sly-grog in search of the next cocktail.
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| Walking into Butiquin Wollstein feels like walking into a Picasso painting. |
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