Oscar

Quick update from Denmark about how things are going in the vineyards. Yesterday in our vineyard in Quinta das Olgas, Mós, center of the Douro Superior, maturity control of the grapes showed already 12,5% potential alcohol. It seems grapes maturation is few days behind the average, but evolving quicker than expected. It is reasonable to expect the beginning of the harvest to be around September 6th. So, you can start packing now and head to the Douro to help us in the most important and exciting task of the year. We will have fun!

BTW, can anyone send us some rain? Vines would really appreciate it and so do we!

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

Alcohol on August 10th      Harvest starting

2007 10.49%                                September 19th

2009 11.86%                                September 14th

2010 10.05%                                            ?

The biggest contribution for this delay in the maturation comes from the very cold Winter we had. Budbreak and flowering both came later than usual, and so will the harvest. Another interesting thing I noticed that shows pretty well how the Winter and Spring were in terms of rainfall, was the vigor of the shooting. The high levels of humidity in the soil helped the vines to grow more branches and leaves than they normally do. All these shooting has been controlled and cut to focus the vine in the maturation of what is really important: the grapes.

And how was the weather in the past weeks? These two last weeks have been extremely hot and dry, which is not good for the vines and neither for the grapes. In some cases, when bunches are not protected by leaves, sun can burn the skin of the berries. I’ve already found some signs of sunburned grapes.

I hope temperatures go down as soon as possible, specially overnight and I wish we have 2 days of rain from now until 2 weeks before the harvest starts, which would be of good help for the quality of the wines.

Oscar

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• vintage 2010 - early august update… (burgundy-report.com)
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S. João da Pesqueira has reached top temperatures of over 35º every day since the beginning of the week while in Quinta Vale d’Agodinho, which is by the river, two days ago at 7.00pm the teremometer showed 41º. The people in the Douro are used to these temperatures. So do the vines. The problem is that high temperatures without cooler nights, which is the case, makes it harder for the vines to maintain a balance in the repining of the grapes. We will get lower levels of acidity, reducing the freshness of the musts and later, the aging potential of the wines. The verison, or change of color of grape berries, started already in the vineyards by the river a couple of weeks ago and is slowing moving to the vineyards up in the hill.

In the next posts I’ll talk about ripening, yields, sugar and acidity levels of the berries so we can have a better idea of which quality and quantity to wait for this harvest.

BTW, do you have any visit planed to the Douro for this harvest?

Oscar

I also posted a photo I made of this new vineyard last April and also another one sent by my friend and our active commentator on this blog, Thomas Kern, taken when he overflow the Douro valley a few weeks ago. Oscar

However, Touriga Nacional currently has a more discreet presence in Portuguese vineyards: it represents around 3% of Douro vineyards, 3% of Alentejo and not even 1% in Minho. These three regions combined are responsible for over 50% of the Portuguese wine production.

The question being, should a country be identified with only one varietal? Take Bordeaux as an example. Or, maybe there should be another variety that symbolizes Portugal? What about a white variety? Then again, maybe the entire marketing campaign of a flagship variety should be forgotten all together?

If we want to preserve Portugal’s vast and diverse vineyards, then we must preserve our numerous native grapes. Therefore, in an effort to support diversity, I will publish a series of posts over the coming months that cover some of our more important varieties of Portugal. Where should I start? The comments are open.

Oscar

P.S. Very interesting discussion going on on Mark Squires’ Bulletin Board on e.RobertParker.com

2010 can be a good year for planting after the long period of rains in the Douro valley and around all Portugal. The soil has plenty of water; so much that it is actually saturated and all the rain that falls goes directly down hill until it reaches the Douro river. In any case, we will probably need to irrigate this young vines later. But instead of starting in June, we may only start in late July or early August.

During the last days the weather has been dry and the sky is nearly always clean. I welcome warm weather and with low humidity, it’s budbreak time and vines need to warm up for bringing us good grapes next September.

Oscar

Did you read the previous post? If so, you’ve noticed that we were challenging you to guess what we will do in the area in front of the winery. In the comments’ section, you can see that Andy Velebil bet on a white grapes vineyard. Well, the answer is not correct, but in other place, we are actually planting a white grapes vines. The photo show the bulldozer preparing the soil of Quinta da Trovisca, and making the traditional terraces from the Douro, “patamares” or  “sucalcos” in Portuguese. We will plant Viosinho, Rabo-de-Ovelha Rabigato and Gouveio (also known as Verdelho) in March. But that will be shown in further posts. Stay tuned!

Some thoughts about 2009 Harvest:

• generally there was few quantity per vine
• the quality of the grapes for Port is excellent
• the quality of the grapes for Douro wines is good, but will age early
• it was necessary over 750 kilograms to make 550 liters (1 pipa) of wine
• the sugar content of the grapes was high, resulting in quite alcoholic wines
• the colors of the wines are deep and dark - some very promising Ports
• after some years focusing only on still red wines, this year we made 2.000 liters of still white wine

Now it is your turn. Do you have any questions or comments?

Oscar