Wine Fictions

 After having recently been in France a neighbour of mine knocked at my door and said he has brought a special bottle for me. In a rather ecstatic way he has told me how he has got into an endlessly charming shop that literally was my face (whatever that means) and spontaneously asked the owner for a unique wine that could surprise someone who works with wine. After a short thought the owner of the shop has chosen this bottle that I wanted to tell you about.  Without any information on it, I dare to say that I have tried it almost blind, feeling indecisive whether it was Cabernet Franc or Pinot Noir. Too spicy for being Pinot and too soft to be Cabernet Franc. There was some intensive and fresh minerality, some light spices and delicate fruit profile in a lively and complex composition.  Being a natural wine, there was also some funkiness but very decently integrated not overloading the main features of the grape. As far as I have managed to know, the fermentation occurre...

  There is an almost infinite fascination when trying a wine blind.  The brain starts rotating quite fast, trying to find equivalents to wines that we have tried before, to specific grapes, similar aging development and, not the least, a brief analysis of the person who has brought the wine.  The same way that my friends often suspect that I offer them Portuguese wines, in this case I first assumed that I would have a Bordeaux in glass. But as I have first felt it, I directly tended to an aged Pinot as it was aromatically pretty delicate revealing some earthiness along with fine vanishing cherries. As my friend smiled and said it was no Pinot, I needed a complete mental reset as I was almost sure I was right.  After rethinking the wine again from scratch I tended to Rhone as it seemed to me to have some leathery notes which time have made softer.  Wrong again.  I have to confess that it was quite a long time since I last felt I had no idea what could be in ...

To travel often offers you the opportunity to try wines and grapes that otherwise you would never come across. Having recently been in Abruzzo, Italy, I was eager to try grapes besides Montepulciano, Trebbiano or Passerina that you can easily find in Hamburg.  As soon as I got inside the incredibly charming Casa del Caffè in Ortona, my eyes were drawn to the wines of Cantina Tollo and specially to this Maiolica that I want to share with you.  As you can guess, I have never heard of this grape before and, therefore, my curiosity has taken over my buying option and I left the shop with a bottle in my hand (as well as really nice mix of coffees done by the owner who, by the way, has recommended me to have the wine slightly chilled).  When home I quickly put it in the fridge and prepared some nibbles to go along with it. Having read something about it in the meantime, my curiosity grew even bigger. Maiolica was almost extinct and it is now the object of several recovery pro...

Growing up in Portugal in the 90s and early 2000s led me to the establishment of a certain taste profile that way too often ignored the fascinating variety that you have in wines from all over the world. Even though I ended up growing a fan of completely different kinds of aromatic profiles such as Riesling or Sangiovese, there are certain characteristics that directly awake in me a smile of pleasure. One of them is the iron taste, often also described as blood. Whenever I come across a wine which is dominated by such an iron taste, I feel myself surrendering to it and purely enjoying it.  At first I thought this was something exclusively from the Douro region. It did not surprise me that it was also to be found in most Ribera del Duero wines as it is the direct region when you go into Spain and that Tempranillo is Tinta Roriz. Same grape, same soil, all good. But having a wine from Burgenland , Austria, where the soils can be completely different, has opened a new brave world ahea...

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...

 As I start writing this post I have just finished reading  Drunken Comportment   by Craig MacAndrew and Robert Edgerton. Besides my criticism on how the whole studies that were presented were mainly based on the effects of alcohol in non-western societies and from an outdated anthropological perspective, there were some questions that jumped out. How different people react to alcohol is one of them. Even though there is an attempt to establish a pattern, they do fail to do it. This sends me more to the personal field, saying that it is more dependent on the individual than on a certain culture.  Still,  I do believe that certain moments in certain societies can condition people's reactions to alcohol.  But I do not have a concrete conclusion on the theme due to the amount of thoughts that are still popping up in my mind in a rather chaotic way and that is something typically mine. What I have quite clear is that there is a very strong connection between co...

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...

 The other day I was at a tasting with some work colleagues from other shops belonging to the company to which I am working for. Being for the first time invited in this circle, I soon realized that I often tend to taste with people with whom I have similar references leaving few place for surprises.   The evening was very pleasant and after a soul warming round of Riesling we have gone to some unexpected Zinfandel with high acidity, wines from direct concurrence shops or some nature wines. On my behalf,  I was tremendously predictable and brought Quinta de Saes Reserva  white, which has impressed most of the colleagues as it drove them to tip on Burgundy as we have tasted the wines blind.  With the evening coming to an end, one of the colleagues has invited me and some others to go to his mom's place as she did not live too far away and he still had  some wines to share. Currently studying to become a sommelier he soon dived the conversation into supe...

 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...

 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 ...

 "She also knew that she herself probably read more than was healthy for her, set too much store by reading, had a kind of neurotic obsession with literature and its supposed moral benefits."  When I have reached page 52 of Jonathan Coe 's Middle England I was confronted with a cruel reality that may affect me as well. Unsure about my rather obsessive behaviour and how it seems to get even more obsessive as I am getting older I have run to my girlfriend and asked whether I was, by any chance, close to such a state. She coldly said I was already stranded there. For a long time. And with wine as well. I am not going to pretend that I got shocked with the answer as I was already suspecting that something similar would be coming.   It is, somehow, true, I have to recognize. The diversity of offers in what respects the book and the wine market are, to a certain extent, very similar. You have an almost non-ending offer of styles, different quality levels (in this case boo...

 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...

That the world's most planted red grape is a cross between cabernet franc and sauvignon blanc is nothing new.  That an argentinian winemaker has decided to combine both grapes inside a wine that may arise a bit more curiosity. To me, at least, it has from the very first moment as a friend of mine has told me about it.  Having met shortly before Christmas I had the opportunity of trying it and it was quite an astonishing moment. Even though the Sauvignon Blanc accounts for only 6% of the cuvée it is quite interesting to feel how the methoxypyrazine character has influenced the dominant Cabernet Franc. But still not quite as intensive as Cabernet Sauvignon. But the green pepper notes were quite lively, bringing freshness into a  Cabernet Franc dominated by intense red fruits and spices as well as a tremendous intensity.  This wine is the living proof that the wine world is incredibly fascinating and that something really exciting is happening where new borders and con...

 While listening to a podcast by Ricardo Felner  about the decay on the consumption  of wine he came with a sentence that I found particularly accurate by stating that there is no safe level of alcohol ingest but that it makes every meal better and that he is not willing to give up the possibilities that it opens. This is a vision that I also share along with a more critical approach to what you drink. If organic wines have gone through a deep revolution in the last twenty years, being now widely accepted by the large majority of the customers, that same path is now being trodden by nature wines. Somewhere in between conventionally organic farmed and nature wines there are the low intervention ones which seek to find a deeper identification with the terroir and its native yeasts without tending too much on wild flavours which often keep skepticals away. This Sangiovese from Chiara Condello is a good example of it. Originary from Predappio, this Sangiovese has a strong min...

 To come across a grape that you do not know is always an amazing moment that you can almost compare to when meeting someone you feel direct empathy to. I may be exaggerating, but if it is a grape that directly connects to our senses then it may well be a not too wrong of a comparison.  Last week I had the privilege to come across several expressions of Kadarka at an event organized by the Wine Academy in Hamburg aiming to promote the work of the Fine Wines Association of Hungary.     At a given time a question has emerged on how to market grapes which are unknown to the major public. The same person who has raised the question has also suggested that the Hungarian producers should have a comparison table to what the autochthonous grapes could compare to. I have to confess that this is a question that deeply irritates me as Furmint is not Riesling and Kadarka is not a spicy Pinot Noir. Having a huge passion for Portuguese wines this is a question that often occurs ...