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...

 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...

This time, I would like to share a wine that it was lively recommended to me at Arinto e Touriga in Santarém and that has the particularity of having let me come across a grape that it was for me pretty unknown, only have heard it as playing side role in Port wine cuvées and under the name of Marufo.  Even though it is in a cuvée it only made it more interesting to see how three different grapes play its role in building a singular wine.  In fact, it is not as simple as that: Mourisco has been fermented first, and on top of the fermented grapes, the Touriga Nacional and Touriga Franca came later to do their fermentation, making a general second fermentation of the wine. It later matures for ten months in barriques.  In this case, it is also to see the work and very personal note of the winemaker.   And the final result is absolutely fascinating! Unlike traditional Douro wines where the stylistic tends to resemble the one in Bordeaux, this Trifasico is really fr...

 In this post I have written about the influence literature can have in what we drink.  If in Lahiri's book the references to wine appear quite often, in Misericórdia by the Portuguese Lídia Jorge there is not a single reference to wine, but the book, for me, had the taste of long well-known wines and that is exactly the reason why I have decided to open this Duas Quintas white.  A cuvée of typical white grapes from the Douro valley it presents itself with nice white peach flavours allied with some floral notes of camomile and orange blossom have matched the intense and delicate narrative built by Lídia Jorge.  I know this is a rather wild approach but I did have the feeling that the delicacy and intensity that you can find in this wine matches the feeling of eternal in the narrative that I have just read. Maybe it comes from the different fermentation processes that vary from stainless steel that confers it enough freshness to oak barrels which have given it a bit ...

Since I have started working directly with wine that I have been having the privilege of being in some of the premium locations around Hamburg listening to really interesting people talking about what Germans often define as "the most beautiful drink in the world". This is quite a privilege, I have to admit. I have been learning about wine in ways that I have never expected, definitely enlarging my horizons.  Still,  I have to admit that having been born in the middle of one of the biggest wine producing regions in Portugal ( the second,  according to 2020 reports ) where wine is cheaper than beer,  puts me in a position that most northern Germans envy, as wine is seen as something "normal" for me and not the result of an accurate training or learning procedure. This does not mean, in any way, that I am more skilled or qualified than any of the people I have came across lately. Most of the times it is the other way round as I tend to rely on my natural instincts ins...

 Just like it happens with books or music, a wine recommendation can play a decisive role on how you model your friendships. I remember a couple of cases of looking at someone after having read a book they recommended and thinking: oh, that's the sort of person you are. For the best and for the worst.Tell me what you read and I'll tell you who you are - that could be a pretty wise saying, specially for someone like me who has previously worked on a library. A similar thing happens with wines.  There's the people who vividly recommend wines swearing that a certain wine is the best thing ever made since the old Romans, the ones who say it in a rather discreet way, the ones who simply command you to buy a certain wine. No matter the way people use to recommend a certain wine, just like what happens with books, there are certain people that you trust more than others. In the case of this Contraste, it was a rather discreet recommendation from a friend of mine that I often meet ...

 There are a lot of excuses I can think of to try to justify why I have opened this Reserva so early, but none of them sounds strong enough to hide the truth that I could not wait any longer to open a typical  Douro wine now that the Autumn seems to have settled in Hamburg. Somehow the upcoming of the new season arises in me the nostalgic wish of feeling dark berries allied with decent woody vanilla notes. It is, for me, a perfect match for the falling of the first golden and reddish leaves which start covering the streets of the city. Sometimes wines just manage to correspond to our inner mood and reflect the multitude of feelings that may invades us at a determined time. Even though I have to recognize that it was definitely too early to open this wine, it has also answered in almost perfection to my expectations. A predominant Touriga Nacional with its particular reaction to wood contact has granted me the satisfaction that I was looking for.  The other traditional gra...

 My relation with white Douro wines is sort of recent as I have always somehow neglected them without any specific reason for it.  I confess I have been trying to find an explanation for it, but I just can't. Still, as soon as I have started trying them, it did not took me long before I have fallen in love with some of its most representative grapes such as Viosinho, Rabigato or Verdelho due to the way they reflect a particularly special terroir which has already fascinated me with its reds.  To the referred grapes, this Quinta da Pedra Escrita also has Alvarinho, which often appears as one of the star grapes of the Vinho Verde region and the "foreign" Viognier. In short, this is an impressively complex wine which offers an incredible explosion of different tastes and dynamics when we are drinking it.  On the one hand the sweet fruity tastes of wildflowers and grapefruit that Rabigato and Viognier give and on the other the fascinating minerality that both Verdelho an...

I know that I often refer to the visual impact of a bottle in our perception of its content but somehow I just can not dissociate both. In Portuguese it is said that "the eyes also eat" and that is absolutely true not only in this Quinta do Portal Colheita as in all the other wines of Quinta do Portal. I do strongly recommend you to have a look at their portfolio and enjoy their artwork. About this Colheita I have to say that the first thing that has impressed me was its freshness and livelihood as I was expecting a rather more heavy and dense Douro wine.  With vivid red fruits and floral notes  it is an explosion of spring in your mouth with a long and persistent ending. According to the enologue it is also recommendable to let it age for a while in the bottle which has made me directly get another one as I am particularly curious to see how it will keep on developing.  I may have been too precipitated on opening it so soon, but I can also recommend it as it has matched ...

There are wines which end up becoming iconic either due to their quality, for the role they have played in a certain moment in history or for their successful marketing as it has happened with Casal Garcia or Monte Velho in the Portuguese case. These wine end up being part of the collective imaginary that can always be talked about whenever you meet fellow citizens. But there are also some other wines that you come across in a rather fortuitous way and that grow into your personal history to an extent which can be equivalent to the social phenomenon of the above mentioned.  These wines often grow inside you and you end up following their evolution throughout the years  as well as a growing curiosity for the other wines produced by the same company or enologue. This is exactly what has happened with the Lua Cheia wines. About seven years ago I have organized a wine tasting where the Lua Cheia em Vinhas Velhas ended up being the star of the evening, surprising everyone present d...

Keeping on the path of the Riesling, I have decided to try and see how the grape reveals itself in Portugal. After having tried several ones from the southern plains of the country, mainly Tejo and Alentejo and being deeply impressed, I have now decided to see how it would be a bit more north in the Douro region. This Cheda 2015 intensively reveals strong flowers taste perfectly balanced with some more traditional expressions of the grape, such as a strong minerality and slight oil scent. Compared to most of the offers you can get around the Mosel region, this one reveals a maturation which sets him somewhere between a new and a late harvest, without being as sweet as it often happens with the later. This is mainly due to its mixed fermentation, being 50% done with contact with french oak, and the other half in stainless barrels. Being a white wine already with five years, I could also notice some interesting evolution, reinforcing its strong gastronomic character, making it a ...

As soon as I have opened this M.I., I found myself diving in its deep and dark colour.  Its initial aromas of ripe berries became stronger as I have let it breathe for a while. The presence of wood has involved it in what I would consider to be the typical expression of the Douro terroir with some sort of Autumn notes. This at a time that the temperatures in Hamburg have fallen drastically, making me forget of the evident signs Spring leaves all around. A perfect wine for these strange days that have taken over the city, I would say. I would also like to call attention to the joint work of Quinta Maria Izabel and Dirk Niepoort that has resulted in this elegant and dense wine making it a perfect day-to-day wine With it I would recommend some of the north american Alberto Rios poetry, such as this A  House called Tomorrow, which I have found myself reading over and over in the last days. You are not fifteen, or twelve, or seventeen— You are a hundred wild centuries...

One of the best things you can experience with wine is a positive surprise. I have to confess that with this Montes Ermos  it was a completely blind shot. I knew nothing about its producer, nor from the wine itself. But as soon as I have opened it, I could barely hold my happiness. Its fine green and rather pale colour embodies perfectly its strong minerality and involving citrus taste. The taste of wood reinforces its structure making it a well bodied wine, perfect for elaborated foods. In the label they refer to the perfect expression of the "Freixenist terroir", referring to Freixo de Espada à Cinta, the place where the wine is coming from. Located in the Upper Douro region and produced exclusively with grapes planted over 600 meters, it really is an unique terroir that we can feel through this wine. Maybe it's just the power of suggestion, but I would even say you can feel the foggy autumn mornings of Trás-os-Montes in this wine.  To accompany it, I would ...

Each wine enclosures in itself uncountable stories. Some of them are made public by its producers, some other remain secret and will circulate in intimate circles till it will be, eventually, forgotten. Some are just purely personal to the anonymous mass who drinks them and are often not connected to its production, but to the moments we've lived while drinking it. It is a perfect symbiosis of life and experiences that enrich forever our wine experience. For some years now, I had a café in Hamburg where Duvalley along with other wines from the FTP  (which was, in the meanwhile, bought by Tavfervinhos) were available. One night, during a poetry reading, the police was called because of the noise Seeing that there was no reason for them to be there, they asked me kindly to come out and have a talk with them without disturbing the clients. After a while they just asked me to get my ID and I went inside the café to get it. When I came out again,  one of the regular clients...