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Los Yesares 2021

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 When you come across the selection a wine shop has to offer you also come across a whole market philosophy and how the owners/managers position themselves towards the wine world. This can be a political statement, a specific way of interpreting what is relevant in the wine world, an attempt to understand and perceive what a certain kind of customers want and to attract them, or to simply try to follow the latest trends.  I am sure there are many other approaches on how to create a portfolium that can fit in a shop, but that is not the main subject I want to write about. Recently, I have been looking more attentively to what kind of wine people in Germany are selling on Ebay and I have to confess that I find it tremendously fascinating to dive into personal collections or, as it often happens, the personal collection of someone who has recently died.  By going through it, I have the feeling of immersing in very personal stories as well as reliving a piece of history. Cert...
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Brutalis 2014

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 As I start writing this post two of my work colleagues are writing the WSET 3 exam.  I have also tried  to write it twice but failed both times, only managing to approve the practical part, meaning that the only thing I can really do is drinking. But with distinction. If on my first attempt I was basically not prepared at all and it was only obvious that I would fail, on the second one I was almost sure I would pass. But I did not.  Sometimes I wonder whether it was a mistake to write it in German or whether the reason of it all was just my general incompetence.  What I know is that two weeks before the exam I was already dreaming about maps of South Africa and its different wine regions or the specificities of Australia's weather. And what about Chile? Which subregion is it most adequate to produce a premium Carmenère?   Talking to one of my colleagues he was complaining about the importance of some of the contents we have to learn. One of ...
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Location: Hamburg, Germany
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Marchese Antinori Chianti Classico Riserva 2019

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 "She also knew that she herself probably read more than was healthy for her, set too much store by reading, had a kind of neurotic obsession with literature and its supposed moral benefits."  When I have reached page 52 of Jonathan Coe 's Middle England I was confronted with a cruel reality that may affect me as well. Unsure about my rather obsessive behaviour and how it seems to get even more obsessive as I am getting older I have run to my girlfriend and asked whether I was, by any chance, close to such a state. She coldly said I was already stranded there. For a long time. And with wine as well. I am not going to pretend that I got shocked with the answer as I was already suspecting that something similar would be coming.   It is, somehow, true, I have to recognize. The diversity of offers in what respects the book and the wine market are, to a certain extent, very similar. You have an almost non-ending offer of styles, different quality levels (in this case boo...
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Location: Hamburg, Germany
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Esteva 2023

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 Sometimes I feel like going back to the classics.  This feeling was probably awoken by my current reading of Gospodinov 's brilliant Time Shelter .   But what are the classics? And who has defined them? This is, in fact, a question that I find too hard to answer as I believe that every person has its own references with which has grown and that end up being a personal classic.  Even though it is terribly hard for me to get rid of books that I have really enjoyed reading as I dream to go back to sometime in my life, there is only one book that I have truly gone back to: Os Lusíadas by the renaissance Portuguese poet Luís de Camoes.  Music wise, I would define Ten by Pearl Jam , Kind of Blue by Miles Davis or O monstro precisa de amigos by Ornatos Violeta  as absolute classics to which I often go back to tank some sort of vital energy. And wine wise? What is a classic wine for me? Even though I tend to do with wines what I do with books (there are s...
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Location: Hamburg, Germany
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RvK ZERO 0,0 Sparkling Alkoholfrei

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 The French German broadcaster Arte has recently uploaded on Youtube a short 30 minute documentary called Rettet alkoholfreier Wein die Winzer (Can alcohol-free wine save winemakers?). As it often happens with most Arte documentaries, I grew directly interested and started watching it immediately. But this enthusiasm soon started decreasing as comments from other users started popping up and sarcasm as well as, what for me already is, hate speech dominated the comments box.  This same problem had the family Dahms as they have organized a alcohol-free wine festival in 2024. The organizer, Luca Dahms, has shared his experience with social media and how a wave of hate speech was born criticizing the event. In a much minor scale I was also caught in some sort of shitstorm yesterday.  It is not needed to say that this has left a rather bitter taste in me and has affected my viewing experience. What was supposed to be a documentary where a new and innovative facette of the...
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Location: Hamburg, Germany
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Dido Blanc 2023

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 I am often confronted with people telling me that they envy my job as I can drink during working time and that I often have the possibility of getting in touch with new and exciting wines. Even though it is partially true (not really supposed to get wasted at work and not all the wines I come across are exciting), it is mainly due to the fact that I am surrounded by wine lovers willing to share their recent discoveries. There are also times that I do not feel like drinking at all. There are also many wines that I do not feel like tasting . I know this sounds rather arrogant, but it is coming from an almost luxury situation which often leads to some kind of fatigue where I end up setting my own drinking borders.  Is it then possible to still be able to discover new exciting wines when I am not really in the mood for it?  Mood can really be a decisive factor at the time of making a decision or analysis about a wine.    Not only if you feel like drinking or n...
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Location: Hamburg, Germany
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Festive season wine reflections

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 With Christmas and New Year's there is not only a rise in the amount of wine consumption but also, in my very personal case, a long and deep thought about which wines to open to go through these days that I am not particularly a fan of.  More than just picking up the best ones I have around, it is, in fact a by far more difficult question. For Christmas I have taken in account not only what would be cooked but also the people who would be drinking with me. Besides that there was also another important conditioner of my choices: Saudade . This festive times are often quite emotional on how much I miss being in Portugal. That was the reason that led me to making a last minute wine order by one of the most important portuguese wine retailers in Germany . Briefly after having set my order, I have gotten a phone call from the owner preventing me from buying one of the wines as it was not good any longer.   Positively impressed, I have started praying that the delivery se...
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