Wine Fictions

 One of the main goals of going through a formal wine education is to learn the typical style of a certain region and why certain grapes are the most adequate to reflect a certain terroir.  That being the Dao region in Portugal is often presented as Burgundy, Alentejo as California or the Douro as being the portuguese Bordeaux. In the latest also Rioja is presented as an alternative to Bordeaux. Being so, when buying a bottle from a given region you may be almost sure that you are getting a pre established kind of wine that you can correlate with former experiences you had. But climate change, new drinking tendencies and new approaches to wine making, among others, have been revealing new and fascinating wines that show a new facet that still translate the specificities of the terroir.  This was exactly what happened with this Altitude 430. Produced by one of the most iconic Douro houses, this Altitude is a cuvée dominated by a pretty unknown grape named Tinta Francisca a...

 Even though I consider Hamburg to be a very lively wine city with several wine events happening a bit all around, I have to confess that most of the shops existing are concentrated in a considerably small circle taking in account the dimension of this almost two million inhabitants city.  In the area where I live there are only two wine shops which are 1,2 and 3 kilometers away. In both cases, they belong to major retailing chains, being that one of them is frankly competing with supermarkets, not really representing a good option at the time of choosing a wine. There are a couple of wine bars where you are offered a more or less independent selection but I have the feeling that it is just enough.  When moving eastern the options reduce drastically.  At this point I have to quickly explain that the supermarket wine supply in Germany is mainly taking in account price competition instead of focusing on quality, seldomly presenting a solid offer to people who want to e...

As I have moved to Hamburg about thirteen years ago, I started being invaded with a strong feeling of reliving some of the dishes that have marked my growing up in Portugal. Some are easier than others to recreate, being strongly dependent on the ingredients that you can find. One that has been persistently buzzing in my head is Cabidela .  Original from the north of Portugal with different varietals in almost all the former portuguese colonies, this has been one of my all time favourite dishes. But hard do it in Hamburg. I have asked several butchers for blood but I have been invariously looked with a mix of suspicion and fear.  But while having a look at the possibility of buying a piglet at an asian supermarket, I have came across duck blood.  Without hesitation I bought it and immediately invited a group of friends to come over and try the cabidela.  Being the first time that I have tried to cook it, it was not as good as I wanted it, but I was still satisfied wi...

While reading Nigel Slater 's fascinating A Thousand Feasts I came across a text that, for me, stood out from all the others. Unlike what often happens with me, in this case, it was not a particular bombastic text, but one which has something of a Japanese simplicity and beauty. In a sensitive way Slater describes the joy of eating alone, in an intensity spiral growing throughout the text to some sort of a final climax when he refers to a book where someone has stated that people who have a glass of wine on its own can already be considered an alcoholic. His reaction to it appears as a request "to get out and find yourself a life"*. He ends up concluding that a glass of wine on your own can be as good as one shared with friends.  I can only but agree. Even though I really love to share a glass of wine with people I love, I also deeply enjoy opening a bottle of wine on my own and enjoy the first sip of wine without any distraction. Just me and a glass of wine in a sort of...

 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...

 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 ...