Enjoy, at least as much as I did!

Oscar

1. Children still know from where chickens and potatoes come from and what a real goat looks like

2. Nature is almost untouched with wild animals living just in the outskirts of towns and villages

3. Dancing with an African girl is a bigger lesson than a whole week in Ibiza

4. They make the best no-alcoholic beverage in the world: bissap (have some with me to Portugal!)

5. It smells like earth, species and happy people

Lets continue this list, leave your sentence and I’ll add it to the post.

Oscar

In the center and north of Europe and US, regions that represent over 90% of Port Wine consumption, it is pretty common to find in restaurants, at least, one or two references of Port Wine. Actually, I dare to say that in Holland, Belgium, UK and maybe even Denmark, good restaurants have a broader offer of Port Wine than Portuguese restaurants do (for a Portuguese native it’s not hard to find an explanation for this, as we love to consume everything that is not national; whisky rocks in Portugal).

However, in the same article, you could read “Premium Tawnies should be priced like other wines, not spirits! Ridiculous markups (more than 4 times costs) are the surest means of killing sales.” This is probably right, even though I am not the best person to talk about it, as a producer I want my wine to be available at the lowest price. Is there anyone to defend restaurants?!?

Oscar

Have fun!

Oscar

Quevedo is heading to North American, for its annual trip, with the same purpose of the trip in 2009: to attend to the American Wine Bloggers Conference. The conference will take place from June 25th to 27th in Walla Walla, WA. But before flying to the west cost, we will show our wines in New York City, Tuesday this week, where we will open some bottles of Oscar’s 2008 and share it with the 40+ people attending to the tasting.

The highlight of the tasting will be the presentation of a video that Zev Robinson, a Canadian residing in Spain , will show the audience how Catavino and Quevedo work together in the promotion of our wines using social media. Zev was in the Douro last May filming our winery, vineyards and daily life, and was also present at wine fairs and tastings to record enough material for a longer documentary about Quevedo, the Douro and Port Wine. He will come back in late July, and in early October for the harvest to complete his work. By the end of 2010, we will have a longer video to share with you so you can have better idea of how we promote a very traditional wine like Port Wine using social media.

In the meantime, I’ll show you the video Zev will present early this week in NYC and latter in Seattle.

Enjoy it and let me know which is the part you prefer.

Oscar

A couple of weeks ago, when I visited London, I participated in a very special tasting at Crusting Pipe, co-organized by two Brit friends I met last year in the Douro, Derek and Alex. Wine has this attractive, easily puts a group of people together to discuss and to have fun. And I enjoyed a lot while tasting some old Ports, the majority were Colheitas, which are something the British are not familiar with. In my opinion almost all the Ports we tasted performed well, some great stuff was on the table. This is the list of Colheitas:
- 1934 Dalva
- Imperial Hedges & Butler maybe from the 1930s (on the photo)
- 1965 Krohn
- 1968 Niepoort
- 1975 Quevedo
- 1994 Niepoort

But at the end of the tasting, when I asked them to make this video and to share with us what did they learn that night, Thursday, 11th February, the answers were astonishing. They don’t like Colheitas? I couldn’t believe what I was hearing…. We all know that the British market prefers Ports aged in the bottle rather than aged in oak. But does that mean they have to dislike Ports aged in the wood?

All in all this was a GREAT night (which finished with a beer (because of Scottish customs…). and I also met four new friends of Port: Muriel, Ben, Chris and Jacob. What did I learn that night? Get-togethers are great opportunities to meet your friends and share some glasses of Port. And if you invite me, I’ll try to go

Oscar

The crew at Quinta dos Malvedos, one of the main properties of the Symingtons and the flagship of Graham is blogging in http://malvedos.wordpress.com/ and twittering on @malvedos.

The Fladgate Partnership has also created some blogs for Croft, Quinta do Panascal and Taylor. Check their blogs and don’t forget to leave your comments.

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

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

During the wedding reception the red wines we had were Quinta Vale d’Agodinho 2003 and Cortes de Cima Chaminé. We also had Quevedo Rosé Port as aperitif and a chilled Quevedo White Port. With the deserts and cheeses we tried the Colheita 1994, which you will read about in  the upcoming post.

Bruno and Lucia are now flying to Greece where they will spend a 2 weeks honey-moon.

Oscar e Pedro