Due to their wedding, Mouna and Andreas gave me one of the best cultural experiences of my life, which I will never forget. The wedding was in Niamey, the capital of Niger, a landlocked country located in Western Africa. This was my first time in Africa and I was very excited for that, a continent with such a vast history and culture, with so many different landscapes and one of the most intact continents of the world.

Very differently from the European weddings, which usually last for half a day, celebrations of this weeding lasted for three days and four nights. It started on Wednesday with a welcome dinner for all the family and friends of the bride and groom. After eating very tasty and sometimes spicy local food and drinking a red iced tea called bissap (which I loved and brought some with me to Portugal), we started pushing the groom to the pool. For big surprise of the locals, but as expect when you start playing these games, the night finished with the groom, one of our friends and me in the pool, with no time for undressing.

On the next day, Thursday, there was a big session to paint hands and feet of the ladies, which special emphases on the painting the bride would show when meeting the groom after the religious ceremony. On the other side, men had a more relaxed day, with plenty of time to swim and play in the pool.

On Friday was the religious ceremony. As this was a Muslim wedding, I was eager to see and know how all this would be. There were plenty of differencies, starting by the dressing code: everybody on local dresses. But beside that, as the bride’s mum is a Tuareg descent, all the young men, groom’s father included, were dressing the famous turban. The turban is used by the Tuareg for fending off the desert sand and protecting the head and face from very high temperatures and strong sunlight. We were far away from the desert but to preserve local culture, we were with a turban on. The religious ceremony itself, which lasted for around 30 minutes, counted with the participation of sultans from all around Niger. Surprisingly for me, neither the bride or the groom attended to it. The bride was at her parents house and the groom in another house of the family, both located in the street where the ceremony was happening. Also women were not allowed to participate, they were all at bride’s parents house, listing to the canticles through the loudspeakers installed under the tent where all men were. The pinnacle of the ceremony happens when representatives from groom’s family, bride’s family and church discuss the dowry groom’s family would pay for marrying the bride. In the end, Andreas paid a symbolic amount for Mouna and received cows and goats from the Mouna family as gifts. It was a great deal for him!

On the next day, Saturday, and next-to-last day of our visit, was the civil ceremony, presided by Niamey’s Mayor. There I was feeling at home, as this was similar of what we are used to have in Europe. Also the dressing code was similar to ours, suits for men and long dresses for ladies. And right after leaving the house and going to the hotel where the civil wedding would take place, I understood why suit is not very popular in a country with top temperatures of 40º and humidity over 90% all the time. The party ended late in the night, or better said, early in the morning, after sunrise. It seemed hard to keep dancing all night long, but in such a nice hotel over the Niger river, hanging out with happy people that imbue you of energy, you never feel tired.

And it’s because of these nice, always smiling and happy people that I fell in love with Africa. I want to go back soon, to Niger and to other African countries. For the love of Andreas and Mouna!

Here you can find photos of all the trip to Niger. If there is something you would like leave a comment.

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!

1. To swim in the Douro river against the flow, towards its source in Duruelo de la Sierra, Spain
2. To sail in the Douro, rowing on empty barrels from Ferradosa to the outlet in Porto
3. To run the Cima-Corgo marathon from S. João da Pesqueira to Pocinho
4. To prune 100 vines with our teeth
5. To defy S. Joao da Pesqueira’s #1 dominoes player for a duel out of seven matches
6. To practice “scuba diving” in the wine bins to control the fermentation process
7. To take L’amour (our mighty dog) out for a walk in the center of Pesqueira without a muzzle
8. To plant an hectare of vines with a hoe and a spade
9. To tow the train of the 3pm from Pinhão to Alegria with two friends
10. And this one’s for you to fill…. what do you suggest?

Top 9 elaborated by Joana, António and Pedro

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

Today was the first day. We are harvesting in Quinta das Olgas, in the Douro Superior, and Quinta da Alegria, in the border between Cima Corgo and Douro Superior. The grapes are very sweet, with potential alcohol around 15%. The vines have many leaves dried, resulting from a very hot weather during the four last weeks. Meanwhile, the nights started to coll off, specially in the last two days. It’s 11pm and the temperature outside is now around 16ºC (60º F).

The photo shows the first grapes arriving in 20kg plastic boxes from Quinta das Olgas, which is around 60km away from our winery.

Leave your comments!

Oscar

Roy Hersh also writes a monthly newsletter for its subscribers. One of the topics of the newsletter is “A Question for the Trade”, which, as the name says, is a question from Roy or the FTLOP fun to the Port Wine Producers. For the December edition, Roy also invited Quevedo to participate, and we are very proud for this first collaboration in Roy’s newsletter. Well, I would like to suggest you to visit the web, participate in their forum and subscribe Roy’s newsletter. Especially for Port Wine lovers, the newsletter and the forum deserve to be read.

Oscar Quevedo

This year the harvest started on the 8th of September, which was not really early when compared with last years’ dates. But as this year the ripening was quite irregular, indeed an atypical year, we decided to start the harvest with lower sugar content. As we had posted at that time, we started in Douro Superior - Quinta das Olgas with Bé of between 12,6º and 13,4º. Quinta da Alegria finished a couple of days after, on the 13th of September and 3 days later we started to harvest in Quinta Vale D’Agodinho. At that time the Bé of this vineyard was similar to those of the previous vineyards.

After we had finished the harvest in Quinta Vale D’Agodinho we stopped for 10 days. We restarted on October 6th in the vineyards located at around 620 meters above the sea level, close to S. João da Pesqueira. Also these vineyards suffered from the low temperatures of the Summer, which did not allow very high sugar concentration, Grapes arrived at the winery with around Bé of 12,0º and 12,5º. Well, the good part is that we got wines with very fruity flavours, low pH and high total acidity. In spite of all ripening difficulties, the color obtained was quite good.

We had decided to harvest the Quinta da Trovisca after all our vineyard have been harvested. This vineyard is located at around 550 meters above the sea level and as a classification of B by the IVDP. Leaving it to the end of the harvest, this is mid October is a quite risky decision because an abundant rain previous to the harvest could had harmed the grapes. In Quinta da Trovisca we have all the grapes divided by varietal (which is not traditional in Douro) - touriga nacional, touriga franca, tinta roriz and sousão. And it came up to be a good decision to leave it to mid October. We got a very good color and an unique flavour, not yet smelt during all this vintage.

Thus, I can say it was a log harvest but it was not a worn out vintage. The breaks in the reception of grapes left us some time to work on other stuff. And we can say that the quality was good. However we have to wait for the evolution of the wines to figure out if they turn up excellent.

Now is time to reflect, to reorganize and come back to the routine. The Christmas is coming and as the tradition says, in the Christmas Eve we must all have a bottle of Port to celebrate the birth of Jesus. It is time to send our bottles to those who want to celebrate with Quevedo!

Come back soon,

Claúdia Quevedo

1. When the grape truck breaks down on a rainy day

2. The cigarette smoke from a winery worker while unloading grapes

3. Finding the scissors stuck in the gears of the destemmer after being hidden in the box of harvested grapes

4. Cell phone falling into the fermentation vat

5. Someone diving into the lagar

6. A little hole in a barrel

7. Ridiculously small glasses to taste wine

8. Cork vendors

9. Capping the bottle without a cork

10. Men and woman wearing strong perfume at a wine tasting

What you would add?

Quinta das Olgas - old vines

Five days later than in 2007, we have started harvesting in Quinta da Alegria and Quinta das Olgas, in the regions of Cima-Corgo and Douro Superior. The yield has been higher compared to last years’ production and our estimate for the other vineyards is a productivity of almost 3.5 tns/hectare.

The Bé is 13.8º in Quinta da Alegria and 13.4º in Quinta das Olgas, lower than last year due not only to the higher yield but also to the rain of the last week. Yesterday we started harvesting the younger vines of Quinta das Olgas and we got a Bé. of 12.9º in the Touriga Nacional varietal. 

The weather is quite uncertain and rain is expected for Thurdsay. If this forecast doesn’t come true, we should finish the harvest of these two vineyards on September 11th.

Cheers,

Óscar Quevedo

Ripening Control

The vintage is close and ripening control is very important to define the date of the harvest and to define the order that different fields should be harvest within the same vineyard.

We were carrying out ripening controls in Quinta da Alegria (up Cima-Corgo) on August 29th and in Quinta das Olgas (Douro Superior) on September 2nd. On the top of Quinta da Alegria the grapes were with 11,5º Bé; the bottom part was with 12,1º Bé. Last year on August 23rd we got 12,5º Bé in the upper side and 12,8º Bé in the bottom part. In Quinta das Olgas we carried out the ripening control on September 2nd. The field Vale do Nedo was with 13,0º Bé, Barroso 13,2º Bé and Olgas with 11,7º Bé. On 2007 the control was done on August 30th and Vale do Nedo was with 12,4º Bé, Barroso with 13,1º Bé and Olgas with 12,0º Bé.

Last year ripening was pretty much advanced in Quinta da Alegria. This year weather is quite irregular and even yesterday rained a bit in S. João da Pesqueira and the forecast for the next two days is also rain. We have to hold on and keep doing ripening control to define a more accurate date for the beginning of the harvest.

In 2007 we started the harvest in Quinta das Olgas and Quinta da Alegria on September 3rd. We collected both at the same time because ripening were quite similar in both and we also had a lot of employees available as we were at the beginning of September and almost no one was harvesting. Grapes came to the winery with good sugar content and good acidity, so we could get balanced must. Grapes from Quinta das Olgas was between 13,5º Bé and 14º Bé and grapes from Quinta da Alegria between 13,0º Bé and 13,8º Bé.

This year is different, lets wait 3 or 4 more days, keep doing ripening controls and pray for better weather!

I will keep you up-to-date.

Cláudia Quevedo