In Portugal it is traditional to have fish the evening of the 24^th – bacalhau, octopus or skate. We would recommend a white for these dishes, particularly Claudia’s White 2015. In fact, this wine would also be superb with the turkey which is typical of English and North American Christmas dinners. A finely balanced blend of five different Portuguese grapes, Claudia’s White 2015 has an elegant and complex aroma that will delight your senses with an intriguing blend of slightly smoky and bright citrus notes. On the palate it delivers a well-structured and complex flavour with great freshness and minerality.

If your holiday meals will feature richer meats, such as a roast goose, game, or a crown roast of beef, or the Portuguese cabrito (roasted goat) or a rich lombo assado (roasted loin of pork), then you will want a superb red, and we recommend Q Grand Reserve 2014. Made from a trio of classic Port grapes this wine is maturing beautifully in bottle. Rich dark fruit flavours dominate both nose and palate, with a whiff of spices and a chocolatey richness, and power that extends into a wonderful long finish.

Finally… what to drink with the dried fruit flavours of fruitcakes and mince pies, or the wonderful eggy sugary richness of Portuguese fried Christmas sweets such as rabanadas, filhoses or sonhos? Port, of course. But here, we would recommend the 30 Year Old White Port. The flavour is too complex to put into mere words, but Claudia, who blended this, noted “at a certain point, it smells like honeycomb.” The finish never seems to end. That said, the refreshing acidity is just what you want to cut through the richness of your desserts. Also, honestly, this Port can be enjoyed as a well-earned dessert in and of itself – you may not want any pudding.

Enjoy your holidays!

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

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!

Today we have been making white Port Wine. The grapes that we were harvesting during the week-end were transformed into a healthy and aromatic must during the last days, which was ready for the fortification this afternoon. We are considering to follow Andy Velebil’s suggestion, regarding the ageing of our 2009 white Port Wine. He says he loves white colheitas! Thank you Andy for that!  Check the video right in the moment we were adding the brandy! Lot of noise at the winery… sorry!

We have been dedicating the last 48 hours, this is, this last week-end, to the harvesting of white grapes. Every year we spend a whole weekend only harvesting white grapes. This year the harvest started 16 days before the one last year as the ripening accelerated during August. In order to maintain the freshness and the flavor of the wine, we preferred to pick up the grapes before though the sugar is still slightly low.

In the last 4 years we have only made medium sweet Port out of the white grapes, but this year we decided to make Douro still white wine ad also a small quantity of Dry Port.

Finally  the weather in the Douro is cooling down, with the nights getting colder and windier. After some months without a drop, it rained this evening for an hour. This water was really welcomed and helped to dust the leaves and bunches. I hope it does not rain more for the next days as we will start harvesting Quinta Vale d’Agodinho tomorrow. We need some extra hands, anyone wants to join us?!?

Oscar