Wine Fictions

One of the hardest questions that I am often confronted at the shop is what is my favourite wine? Or alternative, which kind of wine do I drink? To my vague answers, the only thing I can say is that there is no concrete answer to any of these questions.   Being a rather moody person, it really depends on how I am feeling at a particular moment and, definitely what I am eating. Sometimes I may think too much about it as I want to extract the most of both food and wine as well as I like to explore new taste combinations.  That is why I have chosen this Negra Mole for a tapas evening. Also known as Listán Negro, this Arvad has shown the typical light colour of the grape which resembled Pinot Noir, even though there was some brownish nuances.  As I have first felt in the nose there was a feast of elegant cherries and earthy notes such as graphite which has given it sort of a nebbiolo touch.   Some mediterranean herbs were also to be felt. In the mouth it was ra...

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...

 There are certain things in the wine world that puzzle me and the fact that Hugo Mendes is not represented in Germany is one of them.  Since I have came across his work and consequently met him in Santarém that I have the feeling that there is a high potential not only on his work but also on showing how Portugal is going through a wine revolution, redefining its own parameters as well as adapting to a quickly changing market and drinking habits.  From the projects that I was given the opportunity to try lately, I want to highlight my recent fascination with Pet Nats coming from the vinho verde region. If the one from Quinta de Amares has already conquered a fixed spot on the wines that I often go back to, today it was time for me to come across the one by Casal de Ventozela.  Made of Loureiro and Fernao Pires ( this last one quite an uncommon grape in the north of Portugal, I have to say) it has very decent citrus fruits allied with some white tea and a tremendou...

 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...

 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 ...

 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...

 With Christmas and New Year's there is not only a rise in the amount of wine consumption but also, in my very personal case, a long and deep thought about which wines to open to go through these days that I am not particularly a fan of.  More than just picking up the best ones I have around, it is, in fact a by far more difficult question. For Christmas I have taken in account not only what would be cooked but also the people who would be drinking with me. Besides that there was also another important conditioner of my choices: Saudade . This festive times are often quite emotional on how much I miss being in Portugal. That was the reason that led me to making a last minute wine order by one of the most important portuguese wine retailers in Germany . Briefly after having set my order, I have gotten a phone call from the owner preventing me from buying one of the wines as it was not good any longer.   Positively impressed, I have started praying that the delivery se...

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...

 A couple of months ago I have gone through a rather emotional moment as a shelf I have just started putting my wines in the basement has suddenly fallen apart.  I can not really find the appropriate words to describe the shock it has taken over me as I have seen an almost literal river of wine gurgling out of the broken bottles invading the basement of my neighbours as well.   After having cleaned a mess of broken glasses that were swimming in a dark and almost viscous liquid that has left an intense smell all over the garage attracting a huge number of neighbours that have came to witness my misery, I have decided not to have a look at what I have lost.  I know there were a couple of bottles that I have bought for a special moment but, instead of looking to what I have lost, I have decided to celebrate the ones that have survived.  One of them was this Bastardo from Casa da Passarella. And I couldn't be more happy about it.  This has been a wine that...

 It is now a couple of months that I am getting a newsletter from a wine shop where a wine from this winery is wrongly written. Fara insted of Fata may seem, and it sure is, a simple typing mistake, but week after week it seems to me rather sloven as if no care is being paid to it. Another example is on this flyer that I have found at a shop where there's a picture of a Shyraz bottle, with a title of a GSM and as a grape it is given Cabernet Sauvignon. Puzzling, to say the least. What about the following?  A complete disconnection between image and content. A wine from Valencia with the description of a Portuguese Vinho Verde. I believe no further comments are needed.  Having recently been busy ordering wine online for a wedding to which I was responsible to do the wine pairing I have come across countless mistakes and texts which varied from a lyrical romanticism to pure carelessness in order to try to feed people's fantasies about what wine really is in a strange cock...

Wine and literature.  For me these two words belong together in a very special and intricate way. Literature has enough examples of deep connection to wine. From Omar Khayam to Goethe  there have been several writers which have made references to wine and this number does not seem to stop growing in what seems to be a pretty special relationship.  Getting into a more daily life level, I often get asked at work about what I am reading and, in some cases, I even get books borrowed. Confidence wise, this is something that definitely connects to my previous post .   Now that I am reading Murakami's  The city and its uncertain walls  the number of people who ask me about it is even bigger, attesting the author's popularity.  Something that has also marked me was this good friend of mine saying that he was first driven to drink Chablis after having read Stanislaw Lem's The Futurological Congress .   Close to where I was born there was this em...

 When a product is particularly cheap Germans often use the expression "it's a fair price" to refer to it.  Being a non native German speaker, the question that often invades me is : Fair to whom? To the farmer? To the winemaker? To the transport people? To me who is selling you the bottle, to the labeling team, the marketing, the pickers, and the list could go on almost without an end. Certain is just that this expression annoys me to an unimaginable extent. The answer is quite obvious that it is fair for the customer as it gives them the feeling of saving money. This is quite common among older customers and even though I almost tend to see it as a generational thing, it still annoys me whenever a wine is described as having a fair price. Having recently been in Portugal, I came across A Talha wine shop in Sines. Strategically located close to the Arts Centre it is a more than pleasant surprise as soon as you get in. Very discreet from the outside but a guaranteed wine...

 Having been back in Portugal I have experienced how a different social wine culture can influence your global experience as a tourist with a special gastronomic focus. I was deeply impressed with how you could simply get reasonable and totally acceptable wine wherever you went, contrasting with most experiences that I have from northern Germany where you often get overpriced wine that I often refuse to drink.  Working at a wine shop that regularly sells wine to different restaurants, it is almost painful to see what we sell and how it is further sold after being applied the four times the price rule in what is locally seen as the only way to make it slightly profitable to sell wine.  This leads to normal guests thinking that a 25€ wine at a restaurant is a medium class wine which is, in fact,  an entrance level or even bulk wine. The price of  a 0,2l glass often goes around 6€. I do am conscious that Germany has a different life standard than Portugal, but that...

 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 ...

 Now that the summer seems to have finally arrived in Hamburg and the temperatures are getting close to 30 degrees celsius most people around here rush to get their grills out and enjoy the nice weather. Even though it is an activity mainly accompanied by beer, there has been a growing demand for wines which can both pair the traditional grilled sausages and the warmer temperatures. This may seem particularly complicated, but there are a couple of red wines that are made to drink slightly cooled if not cold.  Governo Toscano or wines which have been submitted to carbonic maceration set themselves in the front line. Still, the wine that I want to write about does not fit in any of the categories above. One of the biggest surprises I have found when I have started working at the shop I am managing was this red Vinho Verde . I have to be honest and confess that the part of the country I come from, I have seen people drinking cooled red wines during summer but nothing that compare...

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...

The more I dive into the world of wine, the more I come across interesting and fascinating projects, such as this one by Hugo Mendes.  Born out of a crowdfunding, Mendes is producing wines with grapes that he is buying from different producers and different regions. This grants him complete freedom on the kind of wines he is producing.  Following a low intervention philosophy, this is quite an exciting project where you can find from amphora wines to orange or some more "conventional" ones, which end up not being conventional at all.  In this case, it is a rosé made exclusively of Touriga Nacional from a region which is not particularly known for this grape.  I have first tried this wine at a wine festival when I have recently visited Portugal and tried it now again in Hamburg where I am trying to convince my chef to start importing the wines from this project. It is quite a dense rosé, revealing very good acidity allied with some herbal notes and red berries which p...