Image courtesy of thephotoholic / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Oscar

• screw cap is easier to use than cork, avoiding the need of a cork screw to pull the cork out of the bottle;
• both screw cap and synthetic cork are trichloroanisole (TCA) free, while few decades ago cork had problems of TCA contamination (which above a certain level may spoil the wine)

Despite that, cork is still the most used closure. Why are wine producers so keen in using cork? I’ve recently visited Corticeira Amorim factory and tried to understand a bit more about the motivation for using cork. I’ve also read few article about which closures to use for wine and found some stunning research (check bibliography at the bottom of this article). Putting the environmental question apart (cork comes directly from the bark of the cork tree grown naturally), there are two factors that help cork to be the closure that ensures the best quality for a bottle of wine:

• all the oxygen that passes to the wine comes from within the cells of the cork, and not from the outside; thus cork stoppers are effective barriers to the transmission of exogenous aerial volatile compounds, while synthetic closures allow contamination and oxidation from outside.
• given their relatively high oxygen permeability, synthetic closures promote the wine’s development towards oxidation faster than the other closures. In contrast, reductive off-flavours have been reported to happen more frequently in wines sealed under screw cap, which is argued to be related to their low oxygen permeability compared with other closures.

Regarding to Port Wine, back in 2008 I knew of one Port producer, Castelinho, using not only natural cork. They were using synthetic corks is some of their references. Currently, don’t know any. However, legislation does not allow the use of screw cap but only natural and synthetic corks  (the only exception is the very small size bottle which can be sealed with screw cap). Though I’m sold to natural cork for Port, I disagree with the prohibition of using other closures. Producers should use what they think is better for their wines and Ports. Through experiments of different closures, we could see and taste how different closures perform in a bottle of Port. And eventually we might come to the conclusion of what closure is the most indicated for Port. But through our own experiencing, not by law.

Oscar

Bibliography – If you want to know more about these three closures I suggest you to read:

• Impact of different closures on intrinsic sensory wine quality and consumer preferences
• The impact of closure type and storage conditions on the composition, colour and flavour properties of a Riesling and a wooded Chardonnay wine during five years’ storage;
• Sealing effectiviness;

With this system implemented, my one hectare, which is located in a great area to grow white grapes, but a bad area to grow red grapes, would have an authorization of less than 50% of yours to make Port because the punctuation system does not take in consideration the color of the grape. Some time ago we wrote an article about how does the “Beneficio” system works. The criteria with the highest relative punctuation on the final classification of a vineyard are altitude, location and kind of soil. The highest score of these three elements will be given to the areas better adapted to produce red grapes, not taking in account the color of the grapes produced. So if I want to rise my revenues and make (more) money, instead of planting white grapes in the best area to plant white grapes I may try to find a place, where the rating of my block will be higher but with less potential for white grapes. And instead of growing white I will grow red grapes. During the last decades, this is how people allocated their licenses to grow vines in the Douro. With no differentiation between areas to grow white or red grapes, the Douro is not optimizing its potential to grow white grapes. Normally, we plant white grapes in areas that most of the time are too hot and dry ending up with white wines with lower natural acidity and higher alcohol. A confusing dislocation of resources.

I can see some of you, more purists, sharing the view of Mr. Ernest Cockburn, who said “The first duty of Port is to be red (..)” and thus the system is perfect. Well, we all know some lovely young and old White Ports as well as delicious and fresh still white wines that surprise us every harvest.

In 2001, the law mentioned the necessity to revise and update the classification system but nothing was implemented. In 2008 Eduardo Abade and Joaquim Guerra from Centro de Estudos Vitivinícolas do Douro suggested some ideas for the revision of Moreira da Fonseca rating system. However, the question about using different ratings for red grapes and white grapes was also not revised.

I know this is certainly not an easy task, but the sooner we start discussing it and working on it, the sooner this misallocation will end and better White Port will be produced. This is a win-win situation for everyone.

Oscar

Some weeks ago I was driving east, from S. João da Pesqueira to Foz-Côa when I stared at the number of mimosas growing everywhere. As the weather gets dryer and more austere towards the eastern Douro Superior, there is less vegetation growing, bushes are smaller and few native trees grow. I suppose that this lack of strong native vegetation makes it easier for mimosas to take over the soil. This tree was already catalogued as the most invasive specie in Portugal. But action need to be taken on the ground to stop the development of mimosa.

My grandparents used to have one big old mimosa at their place in Linhares. The smell and colors of the flowers were nice, and the tree was already part of the house. But at that time, there was only one mimosa, and only there. We don’t want you to only see mimosas and vines next time you come over.

Oscar

Quevedo Organic Olive Oil – 75cl

Some years ago my sister came home and said do my father: “Hey dad, why don’t we convert the olive grove into organic production?”. My dad looked at her and replied with another question: why should we do that?”. And Claudia said something like this: “if we stop using chemicals to grow  the olives it won’t take us too much work, and I’m sure a lot of people would appreciate it. Moreover, more and more people are looking for organic grown food. In the end all of us want a more sustainable and less manipulated environment.”

And this is when all started, back in 2006. The olives trees are located in Valongo dos Azeites, which in English means “Long Valley of the Olive Oil” – which better name could the village have?!?  Valongo dos Azeites is located 14km south from S. João da Pesqueira, where we live. This is the place where our ancestors were based, several decades ago. Few hundred meters from the olive trees, we still have the house where our great-grand parents grew up. Valongo dos Azeites is a small village, with 227 inhabitants (2011), which embodies the word olive oil in its name. I’m sure this is not random, but actually because the village has extraordinary conditions to produce golden colored with amazing taste olive oil.

In total we have 25 hectares of olive trees and most of them are over 50 years old. As there was some land with no crops planted, in the last years my father decided to plant some more young olive trees. In total we have now over 4.000 olive trees, producing around 5.000 liters of olive oil.

We are very happy with the organic project. It is true that organic production consumes more time and resources as if cultivated in a conventional way, but in the end we maintain a diversity of weeds, insects and small animals that if we used herbicides would not survive.

Here is a post I made some years ago in case you want to know more about the harvest of the organic olives. This video shows you the harvesting machine.

Let us know if you feel as excited as we do about organic olive oil and share with us what you know about the second most important culture of the Douro valley in Portugal.

Oscar

Additionally to these cultures, thickets surrounding the vineyards, which are spread out through all the valley, are also facing the severe drought. In one of my trips to Porto, few kilometers after leaving S. João da Pesqueira, getting to Ervedosa do Douro, a small thicket was on fire. The firemen were already there and probably had controlled the situation but is astonishing to see flames as early as March. Something goes very wrong this year.

Oscar

I’ve been looking at the national rainfall data of the last months and it is really disappointing. Almost no rain so far in January, in December it rained one third of the long-term average and, even worse, in all 2011 we hadn’t even 50% of the the average yearly rainfall of the last 70 years.

Consequences: it is January, middle of Winter, and we are already in moderate drought in all the Douro valley territory, as classified by the Portuguese Weather Institute. This is not at all good news for the beginning of the year. To make good wine in such a hot region as the Douro, vines need to have enough water reserves in the subsoil, which they don’t have for now. As you may know, vine irrigation in the Douro is forbidden, unless for very specific conditions. So, hopefully the nice weather will stop and heavy clouds full of water will start to move from the Atlantic inland, in the direction of the Douro.

Oscar

Editor’s note: One of these days, I was going with Luiz Alberto from Porto to the Douro when we started talking about the eruption of the Icelandic vulcano Eyjafjallajökull in April last year and its effects on grapes ripening in the Douro. Other discussions followed. Suddenly, I challenged Luiz to write a paper about how climate change is going to affect the viticulture in the Douro. Here are Luiz’s thoughts, originally posted on his blog, My Wine Studies. It’s a long one, but very worth to read. Oscar

When dealing with climate change, natural climate variations should never be discarded. There is  “climate variability”, which is the change in the weather behavior at a certain location from time to time. However, climate change due to human   activities is happening and will have a large impact and many implications everywhere on the planet. The world’s major wine-producing countries – Italy, France, Spain, USA and Australia – are all at risk. Vines are extremely sensitive   to the numerous changes associated with climate change, but this paper will have the subject under a microscope and only discuss how it’s going to affect viticulture in the Douro Valley (and it assumes a ‘business as usual’   approach). This discussion is about what needs to be done in a scenario where the temperatures are higher (with an increase in frequency of extremely hot days), the droughts are more severe, and there’s increased surface   evaporation. Efforts need to be made to keep viticulture and winemaking viable and profitable in this traditional wine region.

Temperature change can have dramatic influence on grapevines and, in general, the solution for the higher temperatures has been simplified: “Go higher“ (either in altitude or in latitude) and the sweet spot for a certain grape variety will be re-stored. This rule certainly applies to the Douro   Valley, where the altitude of the vineyards can vary from about 300 feet ASL to almost 3,000 feet. The Douro has another important advantage over other wine regions:  Exposition to the sun is certainly another remedy for the problems that will be faced. A possible solution is abandoning the south facing vineyards that are too hot  (or try some dramatic canopy management changes including shading) and replant on the cooler, north facing slopes. The Valley offers 360° of exposition, but early adaptation to the new scenario is going to be key to a successful transition (and such a transition requiring new plantings will take years). Most of the new vineyards in the Douro Superior  (where the rainfall level is 1/3 of the Baixo-Corgo) are already north facing.  For example, the famous vineyards Quinta de Vargellas and Vesúvio are both north facing.

In the wine industry things move really slowly (it takes a few years for a vine to start producing wine and many more before it starts making good wine), people have to start acting now. The rest of the world will be also responding to climate change. The efficiency of the   adaptation is crucial.  A region as traditional as the Douro needs to adapt quick and show flexibility. Some laws will become old and inappropriate. These laws will make no sense under the new environmental conditions and need to  be eliminated. For instance, there are significant physiological and morphological differences among Vitis vinifera varieties and the ones that are allowed (or recommended) to be planted need to be re-evaluated in over time. There are hundreds of grape varieties in Portugal alone. The ones that are less sensitive to hydric stress and high temperatures need to be favored against the ones that don’t perform as well under these conditions (such as Tinta Barroca ou Tinta Francisca. However, to mitigate  this issue, it’s also possible to use rootstocks that are  drought resistant (relatively speaking) and, because of that,  R110 is becoming more and more popular in the Douro. It was already used in the past (along with 1103P), but lately more and more producers want drought tolerant rootstocks, rather quantity or quality focused rootstocks.

Higher temperatures, in an already warm region like the Douro, will inevitably have some negative consequences in the   short term (different from a region, like the Mosel for  example, where the  extra heat is helping to bring a large  number of “great vintages” in the last  few decades): Fall  in values of total acidity (especially malic acid) and increase in sugar content (which in return will produce  more alcoholic wines). Harvesting earlier is a possibility to minimize these problems, but the result will be wines without complete phenolic maturity, with harsh and green   tannins. Again, other varieties (or clones of some of the existing varieties) and rootstocks with better resistance to droughts and higher temperatures will have to be   planted. These new plantings will better perform under these even warmer conditions.  Early-ripening grape varieties that are very susceptible to hydric stress may have serious problems being grown in some parts of the region. Canopy management could play a role, with less sunlight and more shading of fruit. However, increasing canopy size also means more dehydration, so this is really a double-edged sword solution to the problem.

But temperature is not the only direct effect of climate change:

• heavy precipitation events can cause damage (due to erosion) to the vineyards. Studies show that these events will become more frequent, making it unbearably expensive (and labor intensive) to repair the walls of the socalcos and patamares of the region.

• earlier budburst can have a major effect, increasing the risk of frost substantially in some varieties such as Tinto Cão. Moreover, if the season starts earlier, it will finish earlier, meaning that harvests will occur earlier and will take place at an even warmer month of the year. This may reduce the quality of the grapes, through a significant loss of water and volatile compounds. Harvesting at night could mitigate   this, though how does one dare harvest at night on such steep slopes?

• the dates between early (such as Bastardo and Tinta Barroca) and late-ripening varieties  (such as Tinto Cão) will be compressed. Since late-ripening   varieties are more sensitive to the increase in temperature than early-ripening varieties, there will be complications to manage the intake of fruit in the winery.

• rainfall is predicted to be more irregular in the Douro Valley with a consequent reduction in water   availability. It seems that there is a consensus that the need for irrigation in viticulture will increase with the warmer and drier conditions and with the more frequent droughts. Since irrigation in the Douro Valley is illegal today, the authorities are seriously considering a change of this law. It seems that the IVDP  (Instituto do Vinho do Porto) is open to analyze the possibility of allowing irrigation for certain cases where it  is proved that irrigation clearly produces better quality  grapes and wines. There are some vineyards where irrigation is already being tested. One example is Quinta de Ervamoira, from Adriano Ramos Pinto. Another is Quevedo that also have drip irrigation in one of their vineyards, Quinta das Olgas in the Douro Superior, since 2007. Although 4 years is a very short period, they could already see some vineyards performing better with irrigation, generating better quality grapes. One good example is the harvest of 2010. Part of the vineyard was irrigated while the other part not. The not irrigated vineyard in some cases couldn’t complete the ripening process, leaving many bunches completely shivered. The part that was irrigated produced healthy bunches with good concentration of anthocyanins and phenolic compounds, that delivered nice colors and flavors to the wines.

• while irrigation seems to be a solution to mitigate the problem with  more frequent and severe droughts, there’s a serious need to  work on measures to promote the   sustainability of the water supply for the entire  region.

The authorities and the people of Douro Valley need a coordinated effort to mitigate these adverse conditions. As Pancho Campo MW said  “Technology will have to be developed and adapted to confront   the consequences and impacts of climate change, looking for more efficient energy systems, reducing considerably the emissions of greenhouse gases,  designing new forms of  fuels, promoting recycling, reforestation, etc. The   international industry must invest in adaptation to new technologies that can help mitigate the effects of climate change. From the point of view of economy, new types of incentives, subsidies and tax deductions are to be   implemented, with economists, scientists and politicians working under a well coordinated effort.” Profitability ultimately drives the wine industry (or any industry for that matter), but showing that a winery is “doing its part” on   mitigation is essential as well. Consumers worldwide will be watching which policies are being implemented to deal with carbon dioxide emissions. The expectations are high and failure to meet them may cause a negative image for   the entire region. Not only there’s need to find solutions to adapt to the unfavorable conditions that the future may bring, but also to make every possible effort to choose the pathways that will lead to less drastic consequences.

By Luiz Alberto, from My Wine Studies

A few days ago I was in England for a Port and Douro wine tasting in The Square & Compasses, an old pub located in Fuller Street, in Fairstead, Essex. Fuller Street is a very small village, with under 50 people, where everybody knows each other and where life is relaxed and very enjoyable. The village is very old, the pub itself is from 1652. It’s actually the nicest pub I’ve ever been at, not surprising voted as Food Pub of the Year 2010-2011 for Chelmsford and Mid-Essex.

Victor Room, owner of the pub, organized a delicious dinner for 60 people who had the chance to taste three of our Ports and Oscar’s 2008, our red wine. If the origin of the drinks where Portuguese, the origin of the food was obviously local, with special emphasis on game from the farm shoot of the village. Pigeon, partridge and pheasant are the main birds grown in this farm.

But lets go to another thing I’d like to share with you. On the menu card designed for this special tasting, there was a sentence that caught my attention: “Proud to be local.” What does this mean? I thought to myself. Maybe it says that The Squares & Compasses likes to be located in a small community, in the countryside, where its natives are like family and where everybody is available to give a hand when necessary. It means that Victor relies on the community to live, while the community finds in the pub the place where they can go for a beer after work or for dinner when they don’t want to cook at home.

I feel I’m local too. I belong to the Douro, more specifically to the small town of S. João da Pesqueira. But in spite of having a beautiful landscape, we are deprived of may other things. For instance, we don’t have the cultural offer that other Portuguese who live in Porto or Lisbon have. But we can always go from time to time to the big cities and get from there what we need. That’s probably what the people from Fuller Street do when want something from London, which is 1h30m away.

In a time where more and more people are migrating to cities, we can’t forget to help local communities to survive. We need to support local business, as local people need these businesses too. Otherwise, when we go to the rural areas in the countryside nobody will be there to give us a smile! And I’m sure if you visited it, you wouldn’t forget the breakfast at The Square & Compasses!

Oscar

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