Fire in the north of Portugal including the Douro valley: orange areas - fire last 7 days; yellow areas - fire last 30 days

Since the beginning of the season over 68,000 hectares of forest have burnt in Portugal, around 10,000 of which were in the Douro. A part from the severe consequences of these disasters, the inevitable question now is, will the smoke of these fires affect the wines of the upcoming harvest, which should start in a few weeks? From what we saw in 2003 in Australia and in 2008 in California, there is some risk of this to happen in the Douro.

Now the situation is better, as temperatures are cooling off and the numbers of fires dropping, but in the last weeks, the Douro valley was covered with smoke from the fires, as I had never seen.

As the wines from the 2008 harvest from Mendocino and Humboldt (the most affected by fires in 2008 of the Californian wine regions) are being released, producers and consumers are finding many smoky flavors in the wines. At least more than can be justified by aging in barrels or by the character of grape varietals used. This smoky taste was not detected during the fermentation of the musts in 2008. Only after a certain period aging, has this flavor become evident. But is there a solution for it? Ii it possible to take the smoky flavor out from the wine, once it is impregnated? Well it seems it is. Some tests in Australia and USA show that using a high-tech membranes filtering process can not only reduce the alcohol content, for which this filter is mostly used, but can also eliminate unwelcome flavors from the wine. Of course this is not a solution for a small winery dedicated to make wines as natural as possible. I don’t even know if Port Wine legislation would allow us.

But if there is no reasonable solution, lets go for the good news. Studies show that many consumers not only don’t mind about the smoke, but they actually like it. But what if instead of wine, it was Port Wine? Would the higher alcohol volume combined with natural sweetness change the tasting profile? Probably not, so all we can do for now is to wait for the harvest to come and after some months aging we will see if the smoke from burning pines and cork trees, and maybe some olives and almond trees, gave some special taste to the 2010 Douro wines.

Oscar

There are many blog entries on Internet about fires and wines worth to read:

A year in wine: no smoke in their eyes

San Francisco gate: smoke Australian wine research Institute white wines

My daily Wine: Interview with Tony Coturri - California

Forbes: Australia technology grapes when smoke gets in wine

Norcal Wine: La Follette wines

Most animals love to feed at sunrise. This is was this rabbit was doing.  Where is it? Big tip: in the main road!

Oscar

When I showed him the new box he immediately told me that the components of that box were different. While his boxes were made with new craft paper, the ones we were now buying were actually made with recycled paper. I was so surprised that I asked him: “Really? So the reason why I’m paying less is because I’m getting recycled cardboard?” Yes, he affirmed. I couldn’t believe in what I was hearing, we were not only saving money and slightly reducing the price our clients pay for our wines but we were also saving the planet! This is the best of two worlds!

Oscar

The end of the Christmas season used to mark the best time to harvest our olives. And this year was not an exception. Beside the 250 acres of vines, Quevedo farms 50 acres of organic olive trees. Since 2003 we are growing our olives free of any chemical and farming in an integrated organic process. We have around 2,000 trees with 70 to 150 years old and around 2,500 between 2 and 10 years old.

Thus, during these weeks we have left the pruning shears at home and we have been dedicated to olive harvesting. Traditionally we used to use long sticks with which harvesters manually shaken the boughs and made the olive fall over a device called the oli-net, wrapped around the trunk of the tree and opened to form an umbrella-like catcher. This year we decided to introduce a new technology to harvest the olives. We are using a vibration harvester, which shakes the boughs, dislodging the olive fruit in few seconds. It definitively creates some vibration in the trunk but seems not to affect the heath of the olive tree. We have studied the effects of this harvester and we concluded no major damage was caused to the tree on the weeks and months after the harvest. The video helps to explain how this works.

To make a liter of olive oil, this year, we need around 6.5 kilograms of olive fruit. We expect to make around 4.000 liters of organic olive oil this year, slightly higher than last year. The younger olive trees produce more and more each year and the older ones keep their low yield and concentrated fruit.

Take a look at the video. What you think about this process?

Oscar Quevedo

These debates are also taking place in the EWBC network and I think I can present you a Port Wine producer’s point of view. So what are Port Wine companies using as closure?

All the port wine producers use cork in their wines. Nevertheless, there is at least one company - Castelinhos Vinhos - using plastic cork for some cheaper wines sold in the UK and in Germany. Besides this exception, the industry uses t-caps for the cheaper wines like standard Ruby, Tawny and White and cork for the remaining high quality ports. For a premium ruby port, we will use better cork than for a premium tawny, because the former’s aging process occurs mainly in the bottle, where it can stay for some decades; while the latter is bottled ready for drinking, after having aged in wood.

In my opinion, Port Wine will resist to the new wave of screw cap and plastic plug used in table wines. Port Wine is a traditional drink also in this sense, and customers would hardly accept a different closure than cork. Cork allows a slow oxidation of the wine, which is complementary to its aging process. Moreover, cork is the closure with longest expiration date. We also know that there have been improvements in the cork’s quality, as a result of the fact that the leading cork producers, and their association, have been doing important research to reduce cork’s bad influence in wine. Curiously, the last table wine I tasted, yesterday at dinner with a friend who also attended the I EWBC, was infected with TCA!!

But regardless of one bad experience, Quevedo Estates will continue to use cork for its Port Wines and also for its table wines. It just makes sense.

Oscar Quevedo