Astronauta Baga 2015

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 More than fifty posts after I have started this blog, I am finally going to make my considerations about a sparkling wine. 

The reason I have taken such a long time to do it is my personal reluctance about sparkling wines. They are simply not my kind of thing, even though I am surrounded by several friends who defend it with great enthusiasm and always try to persuade me wrong.

One of the attempts was to try this Astronauta Baga 2015, produced by Aníbal Coutinho and his fascinating project Astronaut. This Baga was, in fact, produced in the lands belonging to Caves da Montanha which have some of the first sparkling wines that have called my attention in an action by Wines of Portugal in Hamburg for a couple of years. 

Once I have tried it, I have to confess that I was absolutely amazed. 

Its fine and delicate citrus taste with voluminous notes of vanilla allied with an incredibly perfect and dry ending have surprised and seduced me from the very first moment. Being a Blanc de Noir, you can feel the complexity of one of the Portuguese "fetish" grapes, Baga. 

Somehow, I felt like drinking a red sparkling wine with the specific dryness of a sparkling wine.

This was an absolutely fascinating experience which has made me start looking to sparkling wines in a very different way.

This is the same feeling I had when I first came across the poetry of Countee Cullen, from which I share this Fruit of the Flower:


My father is a quiet man
    With sober, steady ways;
For simile, a folded fan;
    His nights are like his days.

My mother's life is puritan,
    No hint of cavalier,
A pool so calm you're sure it can
    Have little depth to fear.

And yet my father's eyes can boast
    How full his life has been;
There haunts them yet the languid ghost
    Of some still sacred sin.

And though my mother chants of God,
    And of the mystic river,
I've seen a bit of checkered sod
    Set all her flesh aquiver.

Why should he deem it pure mischance
    A son of his is fain
To do a naked tribal dance
    Each time he hears the rain?

Why should she think it devil's art
    That all my songs should be
Of love and lovers, broken heart,
    And wild sweet agony?

Who plants a seed begets a bud,
    Extract of that same root;
Why marvel at the hectic blood
    That flushes this wild fruit?



18/20
Country: Portugal
Region: Bairrada
Grapes: Baga
12%
Winemaker: Aníbal Coutinho, Bruno Seabra

Website: http://www.astronautwines.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Astronauta_Baga_FT.pdf

Location: Hamburg, Germany

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