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

As I wrote some posts ago, during the next months we here at Quevedo will have some offline meetings with people we use to have online conversations with.

The first of this meetings was with Roy Hersh, who come to the Douro for the Fortification Tour. Fortification Tour consists in a trip organized by ForTheLoveOfPort, with the aim of bringing Port lovers to visit the Douro Valley and Madeira. During the week that the tour lasts, this group visits several wineries in Vila Nova de Gaia and in the Douro. And of course, producers offer tastings of the best wines they have (which was exactly what we did). So this comes out to be a great opportunity for the people that join the tour and for the wineries that have their wines tasted by people that really know about wines.

This was the first time I and any of us here in Quevedo met Roy and was an honor to have him tasting our wines. Our good friend Sebastião Mesquita, from Quinta das Aranhas, also joined us and brought some Vintage Ports and a Douro wines from 2007.

Here is a video with Roy Hersh and me at the end of the tasting. Leave any questions or comments, and stay connected, very soon we will have some good news!! Click here for more photos of the tasting.

Oscar Quevedo

From Porto departed 20 Douro lovers for a weekend of good friends, good food, good wine and many laughs. And this time we didn’t only dive in the river (we didn’t miss the Côa!) but also in the prehistory that vibrates in Foz-Côa: we visited the Paleolithic carvings of the Côa valley, drawings of aurochs, horses and wild goats older than 20000 years.

We went to 2 out of the 3 visitable spots, the Canada do Inferno and the Penascosa; we only missed Ribeira de Piscos, but that’s a nice excuse to come back. Perhaps when the Côa Museum opens its doors, by the end of 2009.

Some weeks later, I kept in my heart the joy of seeing how an Archaeological Park, based upon such a remote past, can be the seed of the rebirth of the Alto Douro, side by side with the good Wine, Almond and Olive Oil that that land offers to the ones that love them.

We will be back!

Pedro Pardinhas

I am very happy to see that Port Wine producers are taking in consideration the rising importance of Internet and social media. Hope some more wineries embrace wine social media in the coming months. I will pay attention and hope you do the same. The first to find it the first to share!

Oscar Quevedo

This stately landscape that makes the senses stagger easily , feeds the soul and give us energy to live every day. The Douro so majestically described by Miguel Torga, João de Araújo Correia and other poets from the region not so well known but with sonnets not less felt.

The river, with the same name of the region, Douro, marks determinately the landscape of the valley. Until some decades ago it run untamable and wild down the valley. Since the dams were built, it got quieter and with a controlled volume of flow. Not scary anymore.

Here in the Douro we also have the wonderful Port and Douro Wines. The first one is our official ambassador abroad, and the table wine from the Douro is going in the same direction. It just need some more time, yet Port has 300 years in advance.

But for me what makes Douro special is its crowd. Persistent, shrewd, hard-workers, never giving up either in tough times. And there were some difficult days in all these years.

This is the region I belong to, it is with this people I feel myself identified, and I am very proud to say I’m from Douro!

Claudia Quevedo

I’m lucky. Mostly because I believe that everything is gonna be all right.  I enjoy small practical tasks, because the results are immediate. Maybe that is why I decided to start up a company with some friends. I like to win and to lose and to draw. I’d like to be an artist. I enjoy gardening and, though it may seem absurd, maybe that is because the sun and the earth are free. And also because plants remind me the eternity.

I think that time is a bag where fits everything I want to do, and so I often have to postpone, arrive late and run. Fortunately, I’m a fast runner. And equally as quick at falling in love, but much slower, and I’m excessive slower at eating. I’m funny every once in a while, but I’m not a good story teller. I like writing and I don’t like collections; I think I should live with half of the things I have. And ten extra minutes in every hour.

I am happy because I adapt my dreams to what I eventually achieve; I think that that’s being smart. I like to dive in the cold sea. I enjoy hitch-hiking and meeting people I don’t know. Thanks to that, I started liking a menhir that lies in the middle of Brittany. I’m color-blind and I see life and people so often in happy colours. I think that I’m on my way to something very good, and that’s the unexplainable supernatural that I believe in.

Meanwhile, and thanks to Oscar, I started liking wine, both Port and table. Thanks!

Pedro Pardinhas

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A water-drinker writing about wine? That’s me.