Wine Fictions

Being offered a wine is always a good sign of appreciation, but also tremendously complex on both sides: from the one giving it and the one receiving it. When you think of offering a wine to someone you always need to have a serious thought about the person you are offering it and her/his specific tastes as well as her/his expectations when it concerns your personal choice of wines. When receiving a wine, you may feel rather pressured to give some proper feedback to the person who has offered it to you. This Chapel Hill was offered to me by a friend of mine who's a sommelier with a small note saying: I hope it will please you as I know you are not particularly fond of rosés. Great, I thought. Now he will probably be waiting for a comment from me. After having left the bottle for over a month looking at me, I have finally decided to open it, helping me to face the warmth wave which has invaded Hamburg. The first aspect that has called my attention in this wine was its im...

One of the words to describe wine that I listen the most whenever I go to wine tastings in Germany is: "uncomplicated". I have to confess that it took me quite a while to understand the full meaning of it. Maybe it was due to my shameful German knowledge. My first impression was, anyway, that it was tremendously appreciated by most people around. Being rather stubborn and curious, I have started paying particular attention to the moment where the word "unkompliziert" was used. When I finally thought that I knew what it could mean, I have used it in a tasting and I had everyone looking at me in pure shock, till the sommelier who was organizing the evening said: "oh, he's Portuguese." The other guests looked at me as if I have just came out of space and the tasting proceeded without any further incidents. I kept on working on finding out what could this word mean for most Germans and, after almost five years from this small episode that I have shared, ...

Once I have started reviewing German wines in my last post, we head now a bit north from Rheinessen to the world famous Mosel region. From all the grapes that you can have, Riesling is probably one of the ones which better expresses the terroir where it is set.  Playing with this characteristic, you often have pure minerality allied with nicely harmonized citrus taste in the wines produced. This Schlossbergkeller (The hill castle cellar) is not an exception: I would dare to say that it is a pure translation of its unique terroir reflecting the fact that the grapes were coming from the higher part of the hill, which gifts the visitors with quite an impressive view over the Mosel valley. This almost excessive minerality allied with a good general presence of green lemon and some herbs makes it one of my favourite tastes to face the summer and to pair perfectly with seafood. This may well be one of the reasons why more and more Portuguese producers have been i...