Last week, while I was in London, I went to an event organized by Viniportugal to promote Portuguese wines. Its name is 50 Great Portuguese Wines and it goes on its 5th edition. Since 2005 Viniportugal has been inviting, every year, a wine expert to taste and select 50 wines that he or she considers best represents wines from Portugal. This year the selected master was Sarah Ahmed. During the tasting I asked Sarah to share with us what she forecasts for the Portuguese wines for the next years.

Oscar

P.S. I had also the pleasure to meet Judy Kendrick and her crew at the tasting! Judy rocks!

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Next February 12th many producers will fly to Germany to show up in other tasting co organized by the IVDP and by the World of Port, which is run by Axel Probst, other Port lover.

That said, If you live in Germany and specially near by Leverkusen, do not miss this chance to taste many Vintages from the so special harvest of 2007. I will be there for a toast and for a lot of fun!

Oscar

I made a video showing my experience and I also asked Rodolfo Tristão, Coffee Sommelier of Nespresso presenting live this idea. Take a look and leave your comments!

Oscar

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Yesterday Quevedo attended a tasting of Vintage Port 2007 for the Portuguese press and trade in the Palácio da Bolsa, in Porto. The tasting, organized  by the IVDP, by the Porto Wine Producers Association and by Essência do Vinho, got together around 50 producers only for tasting their Vintage Ports 2007.

I had already tasted some of these Vintages but yesterday I had a broader view of what the year was for the other producers. I got surprised by the consistency among almost all of them. Some lovely wines. Different styles of winemaking are pretty evident but the quality is generally high. Very high. And I am glad for that. It is good for Quevedo, it is good for the producers and it is good for the consumers. It is a positive-sum game and we should all be happy and proud of these wines.

Check the video and you will see what were my preferred Vintages. Oh, and my teeth are already back to its natural white color!

Oscar

From 9am to 6pm GMT all the steps of a harvesting in the Douro will be broadcast, including the fortification of must for Port Wine. At 5pm there will be an audio connection with the conference room in the BWT, where Ryan Opaz, from Catavino, will be speaking about Social Media in Action.

The S. João da Pesqueira’s Town Hall is providing the technology and video experts for the realization of the live streaming to the BTW. This last one offers the  opportunity to on/off traders and press visitors, to taste small productions of exclusive wines. Quevedo has great expectations about this wine fair as a way to find an importer or distributor for its wines and Ports in the United Kingdom.

After launching the first Port Wine producer blog, Quevedo (which currently grows 250 acres of wines and 50 acres of organic olive trees in S. João da Pesqueira, Douro, Portugal) reinforces its commitment with new technologies using them as a direct and interactive way to communicate with the wine lovers, becoming the first Port producer to stream live the harvest.

We would like to invite you to visit our winery and our vineyards in the Douro valley.

One of the most interesting moments of Vindouro is the Port Wine auction. This year Quevedo sent a bottle of our recently launched Quevedo Colheita 1992. Besides our Port, only three more bottles out of 16 were still on the market. All the rest were Ports never commercialized or sold out. The prices were generally high and the buyers were almost all local. It probably shows that there was an emotional interest in some of the bottles regardless its price. Here is the list of the Ports at auction and the respective prices:

The harvest is now starting and during this time of the year, as expected, we have more people around visiting the Douro. One of the very last were Ema and Nuno from Magna Casta, a Portuguese wine blog. We could not talk very long, but hopefully they will come back soon!

Oscar

I have been spending this week making wine tastings in different places of the country. It is my first time in Denmark and I am having a great time. The interesting part of the trip occurred yesterday in Oksbøl (a small town in the West of Denmark), where took place a wine tasting of American and Port wines for the members of the local wine club.

There were 100 hundred people at the room when I challenged them to pronounce my last name, Quevedo, loud with lot of emotion.  You can´t imagine how happy I felt when I hear them pronouncing it correctly. Yes, Quevedo can! I was almost in tears. Here is the video made by Elizabeth Rice of DFV Wines.

Dan, the very nice manager of the local supermarket Super Brugsen, gave a bottle of our White Port for the person who could better pronounce Quevedo. I´ll soon post his photo. I got it, here is the photo of Karsten Hjorth Soerensen.

Thank you Dan and Colin (Head of West Denmark Tourism) for organizing of the tasting.

Oscar

A couple of weeks ago I was in Seattle. There were some good excuses to visit Roy Hersh:

1. to check if the weather in Seattle is so gray as people say?

2. does Roy have any other bottle in his private cellar besides Port Wine?

3. is Boeing developing a seaplane specially adapted to the hills of the Douro?

All that, besides the possibility of spending some time with Roy, was more than enough to make me go.

I had an incredible time, but the pinnacle of the trip was the Port Wine tasting on the day before my departure. We were celebrating the 4th anniversary of the For the Love of Port. BTW, congratulations team! Members of the forum or simply Port Wine lovers, we were there to share, taste and enjoy some GREAT Ports. Here is the list:

• Warre Colheita 1937
• Niepoort Colheita 1963
• Rocha Colheita 1966
• Quevedo Colheita 1968
• Warre Vintage 1963
• Dow Vintage 1966
• Quinta do Noval Nacional 1967
• Croft Vintage 1963

My prefarded Port of the evening was the Warre Colheita 1937, very elegant and balanced, slightly creamy and with an astonishing bright color. I want to go back to Seattle. I have to!

More photos here!

Oscar

On the second day of my visit, Wednesday July 29th, Roy Hersh gave a speech and a tasting of Port Wine for sommeliers. We tasted over 10 Ports from four different houses, Quinta do Infantado, Sogevinus, Symington and Quevedo. The older Ports were from 1968, a Kopke Colheita and a bottle from my grandpa’s particular reserve I brought for this occasion.

We finished the session tasting our Quevedo Vintage 2007. Putting this youthful on the palate was an interesting experience. After having tasted a Dow Vintage 1985 and Quinta do Infantado Vintage 2000, we could see the strength, power and body of a young Vintage Port right after going to the bottle.

This tasting was specially interesting to meet the importer of Kopke in the US, Wineworth and the northwest Sales Manager of Premium Port Wines, importer of Symington wines and to make new friends between the sommeliers of Seattle. Here are the blogs of some of them: Dave Bender and Bryan Schweitzer; others can be found on twitter: @YasharNow and @jlschmit.

Oscar Quevedo