I would like to show you some places that shouldn’t be forgotten on a two days trip to Porto and that will surprise you.

Casa da Música

A good starting point is the Boavista area, where you can visit the most recent and modern cultural space of the city: Casa da Musica. Going down Boavista Avenue, in direction to the sea, you arrive to the Serralves Museum and Gardens. In this Museum you can find fabulous exhibitions of Portuguese and International contemporary art, you should also take the opportunity to visit its wonderful gardens. If you visit the Museum until 18th January 2009 you will have the opportunity to visit the exhibition of the Spanish sculptor Juan Muñoz, who has a sculpture expose in the old part of the city in the Cordoaria Garden.

Juan Muñoz sculpture in Cordoaria Gardens

And while you are in the downtown, how about a visit to some landmarks of the city, like Tower of Clérigos, Carmo Church, Sé Cathedral and S. João Theater (you can find all information you need in Porto Turismo website). You shouldn’t miss also a walk through Miguel Bombarda Street, where you can find a lots of art galleries to visit.

At night I suggest a walking through Galeria de Paris Street, a new meeting point of the city. This quarter is known for its cosmopolitan side, here is normal to see people from different nationalities who are working or studying in the city and want to have some fun.

Ribeira

The next day, and to end the visit in the best way, nothing better than an afternoon evening in the Cais de Gaia, near the traditional Port Wine cellars. It is the best place to enjoy the sunset reflected on the Douro River, together with friends and a Quevedo Port.

Bruno Pinto

Roy Hersh also writes a monthly newsletter for its subscribers. One of the topics of the newsletter is “A Question for the Trade”, which, as the name says, is a question from Roy or the FTLOP fun to the Port Wine Producers. For the December edition, Roy also invited Quevedo to participate, and we are very proud for this first collaboration in Roy’s newsletter. Well, I would like to suggest you to visit the web, participate in their forum and subscribe Roy’s newsletter. Especially for Port Wine lovers, the newsletter and the forum deserve to be read.

Oscar Quevedo

Roger & Luc De Smedt wine shop, Belgium

These days Quevedo head up north in Brussels, Belgium, doing some wine tasting with our clients and with the clients of our clients. The tasting will end tomorrow, the November 11th. If you are close to Brussels and if you want to taste our Port Wine, our Douro Wine or even any other wine from the producers present at the tasting (see the list underneath), just email me and I can try to get an invitation for you.

As far as I hear from the client here in the tasting, French wines still having the majority share in the Belgium’s’ private cellars. Nevertheless, wines from Spain, like DO Cava, from South Africa and from Portugal are getting more and more demand from those who look for new experiences and new tasting.

We are offering for tasting two Douro wines (Vinho Cão 2002 and Quinta Vale D’Agodinho 2003) and five Port Wines (Porto Rita’s Tawny, Porto Quevedo White, 10 Years Old, LBV 2000 and Vintage 2005). While the Douro wine is almost always a surprise as people here did not ever had tasted a Portuguese not fortified wine, the Port Wine is easily a success. The Belgium love Port (Belgium is the fifth market in value and volume) and there are a lot of Port enthusiasts. They know the different categories of Port, some emblematic brands and they are aware of the good harvests. This makes me really happy. I feel that all the hard work we have during the year to get a good wine is then carefully evaluated and analyzed by people that love wine. And this passion for wine is the principle of a small and familiar winery such us Quevedo!

Óscar Quevedo

Wine producers also represented in the wine tasting:

France

Mr Vigier, Chateau Les Chaumes, Chateau Reve, Pomerol

Mr Jean Luc Alla, Chateau de St Pey Gran Cru St Emilion

Mr Yves Glottin, Chateau Goudichaud, Chateau La Fleur des Graves, Graves de Vayres

Mr Francois de Coninck, Chateau Junayme, Chateau Canon, Fronsac

Mr Henri Brut, Clocher Notre Dame de Marceille, Clocher de Rouffiac, Limoux

Mr Gilles Bousquet, Domaine St Antoine, Minervois

Mlle Pedrol, Chateau Les Pins Cotes de Roussillon, Rivesaltes, Cotes de Roussillon

Mr Jerome Jelonch, Le Faite de St Mont, Plaimont

Domaine Edmond Rentz, Alsace

Domaine du Vieux Chateau, Daniel-Etienne Defaix, Chablis

Other countries

Ms Yngvild Steytler, Kaapzicht, Steytler, Stellenbosch, South Africa

Mr Erik Scheerlinck, Tsinandali, Saparavi Marani, Mukuzani from Georgia, Tamaioasa from Romania, Enira from Bulgaria

Mr Pedro Azcunaga, Azcunaga, Mont Michel, Navarra and Cava, Spain

Home & Passion Restaurant

These days we are traveling in Belgium to do some wine tasting with our clients. Once a year, one of our clients, Roger & Luc De Smedt, a distributor located in Brussels, invites his clients for a wine tasting in a restaurant or a wine shop with the producers he represent and then finally at his shop.

We are here for four days, from Saturday November 8th to Tuesday, November 11th. Today we are in the Home & Passion restaurant, a French traditional cuisine restaurant, where the Italian Chef Pino, from Sicilia, leads the kitchen. We were four producers: Alain Vigier from Bordeaux, France, Daniel-Etienne Defaix from Chablis France, Kaapzicht from Stellenbosch, South Africa and us, Quevedo from Douro, Portugal.

At around 7pm we had dinner at the Home & Passion and after we went to a decoration shop also for showing our wines to the people that were visiting the shop and buying decoration stuff for Christmas.

Quevedo Wines

And as there is no Christmas without Port Wine, 7 weeks before Christmas is probably the right moment to think about which Port to choose. And why the tasting at the decoration shop? Well, a bottle could also be seen as a decoration piece while the wine is in its ageing process!! Or maybe the right reason is that Luc is friend of the decoration shop owner!

It has been a fruitfulness experience and I hope to come back to you once again during these days.

Óscar Quevedo

The vines are beautiful, the Douro Valley is amazing, Portugal is a nice country and some of your friends like your wines. You meet people, you eat and drink plentiful. But you cannot forget you must also sell your wine. Or at least some bottles!!! And this is also nice but not so easy.

Because that is not easy we in Quevedo decided to use some other marketing tools and set up a wine blog. We think it can help us to show the world our wines and probably people will like and enjoy it. In the last years we have been facing a good growth, our exports are rising but two base-countries are missing: US and UK. We are not exporting to any of these countries. And we want to!

So hands on approach and lets try to find a good ambassador of our wines. In the last months we exchanged some information with a couple of importers in the US, in the East and West. They gave us good feed-back, we sent some samples and now we are waiting for the approval. In all this process there was also time to burst out laughing: when one of our contacts received the samples, he prepared it so send to a government control agency but by mistake they were sent together with other wines to a distributor in the Midwest. The distributor opened them all and its seams he loved “every single one”. Well, he had to prepare new samples to send and in the meantime two more weeks had gone. Maybe this could turn out to be “a desirable mistake”!

We are really willing to share with the world the passion we have inside, and I hope we can share it with the US and the UK soon!

Óscar Quevedo

But I’m not going alone, and as a Quevedo ambassador I’m taking in my backpack a bottle of Vintage 2005 to offer a tasting to my hosts; this bottle belongs to an exclusive series of bottles that were numbered and signed by Cláudia, our winemaker, and was offered by Óscar Jr. for special occasions; I wonder if there’s a better moment to open it than the visit to some friends that share our passion for vines and wine!

Soon I’ll tell you how the trip is going, as well as what did Pam and Denis say about our Vintage.

Till then,

Pedro

Douro harvest

In this blog, together with all cybernauts Quevedo can share experiences and let the world know all joys and setbacks that a Port Wine producer daily faces. Launch a blog is one more demanding challenge adding to all others that are needed to overcome in the tough, but rewarding, reality in which a wine producer of the Douro region lives.

After many years of existence, Quevedo had the desire to share all stories that come with the different generations.

There are already a few tales involving Quevedo, and if in some years, despite of all the sweat and tiredness, is a great satisfaction experience the harvest and the transport of such perfect grapes to the winery, hoping to see once again its wine recognized by the consumers, there are other years that unexpected weather, or other diseases brutally affect the production, and let fall to the ground all the efforts of another hard work year.

In addition the great desire I have to share with you the Quevedo wine adventures, the wine and especially the Port Wine, is also the anxiety to show the Douro region, the amazing and huge landscapes where the infinite is the limit, and the history of the people that live in Douro and that every day feel the pride of living in such a remarkable region, delivering its life to such a hard, but rewarding work.

I already know Quevedo for some time and I have lived close their history and wine culture, being also obvious in Quevedo the passionate will to put this new project working, that’s why I was very excited when I was invited to participate in this project. This is an endeavor that deserves to be supported and encouraged, and I will consider this challenge fulfilled when you feel a little of what I feel when I’m near Douro and its magnificent wines.

The Port Wine is a spiritual drink, that suits at any time and any place. Its richness and diversity allows us to enjoy an excellent Vintage Port in a cold winter night near the fireplace, or drink a good chilled White Port in a summer night with friends.

The Port Wine has no secrets or age barriers, you just need to be prepared to discover all tastes and sensations that a glass of its nectar can offer you.

With my participation in this blog I hope I can help all of you to understand better the Port wine culture, and to demystify its image.

Bruno Pinto

Water glass

I got involved in this for liking to write about nothing, for liking the soil, the sun and tasting the grapes, even when they’re not ripe; and, first of all, because I feel at home at Quevedos’ home and for the hug that is mine and Óscar Zé’s since even before we were good friends.

To be true, I am not a good wine taster yet, but the last bottles we’ve opened leave no doubts that soon I will; this is the adventure of taste and pleasure that I invite you to join me in.

Pedro Pardinhas

Quinta Sra do Rosário

The highest of the Quevedo vineyards is located 2,130 feet high and is also the oldest and most respectable quinta planted 40 years ago.

Because of its locations, the wines of this field are always the last to be pruned and harvested.

Therefore form Quinta da Senhora do Rosário we obtain red fruity, concentrated and fresh wines.

Quinta da Trovisca

One and a half miles away from S. Joao da Pesqueira stands Quinta da Trovisca, 38 acres of robust vines of touriga nacional, touriga franca, sousão and tinta roriz.

January is the optimal for prune, due to the local micro-climate while the vintage is taken in the third week of September. Trovisca’s soil facilitates the production of structured, fruity wine with well-balanced acidity.

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