Wine Fictions

Even though I tendentially try to focus in just one wine at the time of tasting, sometimes it is a more than pleasant surprise to see which wines outstand when you try several ones in a short amount of time.  Recently at a friend's birthday there was an exciting selection of different wines as he is quite a wine afficionate, to say the least. From matured whites from magnum bottles to elegant south african Chardonnay, passing through champagne, Rioja or a surprisingly dense german red, among others. But from all the wines which were opened in the evening, this Pinot Blanc from Krispel was, for me, the one that stood out. Even though it was already 8 years old, it still presented itself with tremendous freshness and complexity revealing an interesting balance between primary and tertiary flavours. In the mouth it has very pleasant creaminess, nuts and green quince in what I consider a tremendously fascinating flavour palette.  This is the kind of wine that you can't just s...

 On chapter 37 from his Story of Wine Hugh Johnson decides to dedicate the whole extension of it to the tax system that the Prussians have created in order to favour some wine regions as it also excluded some others from entering a growing wine market.  This sort of commercial war is more than a current theme for us nowadays as this article from Wein Plus brilliantly summarizes. The way Trump has been playing with tax changes has been disruptive and has been creating uncertainty in the global markets and wine is not an exception.  I am not going to go too much deeper on this subject as there are many articles out there portraying this new conjucture and how it is affecting people all around the world. Now that I am trying to get into the business of importing wine from Portugal to Germany, I have been confronted with an unprecedented bureaucratic monster that I could hardly imagine before. To the promises of having a facilitated and fast online business registration I ...

Working at a wine shop you often fall into schemes of answers that you do not make too much effort to answer and you end up selling mainstream wines that reveal few character or terroir and that, personally, you would never get close to. A major part of the German public asks for Grauburgunder (Pinot Gris) with low acidity levels, not too pronounced primary aromas, dry, are you really sure it is dry, they often ask and, most of all, cheap.  This is often rather frustrating and I just indicate anonymous wines that we have in offer and as the clients leave the shop, I often forget their faces and names.  Sometimes I do fell the ambition of trying to recommend better wines as I believe everyone should be drinking better wines, but my attempts are often met with mistrust.  This is a theme that I am often confronted with when talking to fellows from other shops.  Germany offers a wide range of exciting wines and winemakers and I feel it tremendously frustrating to fight a...

 As I start writing this post I have just finished reading  Drunken Comportment   by Craig MacAndrew and Robert Edgerton. Besides my criticism on how the whole studies that were presented were mainly based on the effects of alcohol in non-western societies and from an outdated anthropological perspective, there were some questions that jumped out. How different people react to alcohol is one of them. Even though there is an attempt to establish a pattern, they do fail to do it. This sends me more to the personal field, saying that it is more dependent on the individual than on a certain culture.  Still,  I do believe that certain moments in certain societies can condition people's reactions to alcohol.  But I do not have a concrete conclusion on the theme due to the amount of thoughts that are still popping up in my mind in a rather chaotic way and that is something typically mine. What I have quite clear is that there is a very strong connection between co...

There are times that I think that to be in the wine business has more to do with an insane passion for the product you are handling than anything else.  Having recently been at the 2026 edition of the Vinoble in Jérez de la Frontera, Spain, I was amazed with the amount of projects I came across which revealed a tremendous audacity and authenticity and that try to imprint a new character in the wine world.   This is what fascinates me the most about working with wine.   The passion that you can feel when you are facing a unique product which reflects a certain terroir, a particular view of a winemaker and an almost life philosophy is something that I can only recommend.  It is this passion that has led me to start importing wines to Germany. More than a business idea, it is an impulse of sharing with others wines that I find  peculiar and that can awake emotions. Just like this Amphora by Hugo Mendes. With tremendous freshness and saltiness, this i...

  The gothic idyllic location of Convento de Sao Francisco in Santarém was chosen to host the 8th edition of  Tejo a Copo  where 28 producers of the Tejo region were given the opportunity to show their work. Being born in Santarém, for me it was a great opportunity to come across what's happening in the region where I was born.  Even though there were quite some wines which still tended to show an old fashioned and sort of boring expression by the use and abuse of international  grapes that do not really reflect the specificities of a fascinating terroir, there were also some really good and fresh winds of change. Among some really interesting late harvests, sparklings or low intervention wines, there were also the ones which, in my opinion, have managed to reflect the different sub regions of Tejo. One of them was this Bathoreu Trincadeira 2023.  Juicy and elegant with dominant black berries it has also presented some fascinating freshness, promising a go...