I think this will be a great opportunity to meet again with the wine lovers from Lisbon, to meet some wine bloggers, mainly Portuguese and definitively, to taste and evaluate the most recent launches from Douro wineries!

So if you are reading this and you have not yet your week-end program complete, please come to Convento do Beato to meet Quevedo and to taste our and other wines from Douro. It is a very good opportunity and you must participate.

We will come with some news during the event.

Hope to see you there!

Oscar Quevedo

Now, a few months after I dived in Port (and I have positively dived in it, believe me), I started seeing and drinking it as a part of my life, drinking it before dinner, on the rocks, or with peanuts, on a Saturday afternoon, or with some friends, in the evening, at the Galerias de Paris, the heart of Porto’s night life, where many friends prefer vodkas-orange and whiskys-cola.

I’ve just noticed how, for me, only Port is tasty by itself, but I believe that it may also do well in a cocktail. Good challenge, to find what goes well with Port: Miguel Esteves Cardoso suggested pineapple…one must try it out! If you taste it, let us know.

Back to the subject, with what does Port match, I heard of combinations with music and with food, and I believe that there are many more with landscapes, books, journeys and seasons of the year. With such amount and quality of pairings, I feel that they are only one: Port pairs with Life. Ours!

Pedro Pardinhas

This is definitively an extraordinary prize for this dedicated family. But are also amazing news for the Portuguese wines, and mainly for the Douro wines, which year after year are more and more known and recognized by the world wine experts.

From Quevedo we would like to congratulate the winemaking team, which includes Manuel Lobo, Dominic Morris and Tomás Roquette and say thank you to put the name of Portugal in so recognized list!

Oscar Quevedo

Top 10 Wines:

1. Casa Lapostolle, Clos Apalta Colchagua Valley 2005, 96 points, Chile

2. Château Rauzan-Ségla, Margaux 2005, 97 points, France

3. Quinta do Crasto, Douro Reserva Old Vines 2005, 95 points, Portugal

4. Château Guiraud, Sauternes 2005, 97 points, France

5. Domaine du Vieux Télégraphe, Châteauneuf-du-Pape La Crau 2005, 95 points, France

6. Pio Cesare, Barolo 2004, 94 points, Italy

7. Château Pontet-Canet, Pauillac 2005, 96 points, France

8. Château de Beaucastel, Châteauneuf-du-Pape 2005, 96 points, France

9. Mollydooker Shiraz McLaren Vale Carnival of Love 2007, 95 points, Australia

10. Seghesio, Zinfandel Sonoma County 2007, 93 points, California

These days in Belgium were really fruitful; we had opportunity to provide our wine for a tasting but also to taste several wines. Some of these tasting notes can be found in Adegga. I could learn more about the strong and full-bodied Kaapzicht wines from South Africa, about the extraordinary flavor of the Daniel-Etienne Defaix wines from Chablis or the elegant Chateau La Fleur de Graves from Graves de Vayres, just mentioning some.

I must confess that this tasting would have been much better with the presence of some bloggers. Wine or food blogger of Brussels or even from all Belgium, next year we have to be more active, you have to come to this tasting, where you can find over 100 wines from 7 different countries. Well, indeed we could go further and we could organize a bloggers dinner on Saturday evening. Leave your comments and we will try to put this idea up!

Oscar Quevedo

Roger & Luc De Smedt wine shop, Belgium

These days Quevedo head up north in Brussels, Belgium, doing some wine tasting with our clients and with the clients of our clients. The tasting will end tomorrow, the November 11th. If you are close to Brussels and if you want to taste our Port Wine, our Douro Wine or even any other wine from the producers present at the tasting (see the list underneath), just email me and I can try to get an invitation for you.

As far as I hear from the client here in the tasting, French wines still having the majority share in the Belgium’s’ private cellars. Nevertheless, wines from Spain, like DO Cava, from South Africa and from Portugal are getting more and more demand from those who look for new experiences and new tasting.

We are offering for tasting two Douro wines (Vinho Cão 2002 and Quinta Vale D’Agodinho 2003) and five Port Wines (Porto Rita’s Tawny, Porto Quevedo White, 10 Years Old, LBV 2000 and Vintage 2005). While the Douro wine is almost always a surprise as people here did not ever had tasted a Portuguese not fortified wine, the Port Wine is easily a success. The Belgium love Port (Belgium is the fifth market in value and volume) and there are a lot of Port enthusiasts. They know the different categories of Port, some emblematic brands and they are aware of the good harvests. This makes me really happy. I feel that all the hard work we have during the year to get a good wine is then carefully evaluated and analyzed by people that love wine. And this passion for wine is the principle of a small and familiar winery such us Quevedo!

Óscar Quevedo

Wine producers also represented in the wine tasting:

France

Mr Vigier, Chateau Les Chaumes, Chateau Reve, Pomerol

Mr Jean Luc Alla, Chateau de St Pey Gran Cru St Emilion

Mr Yves Glottin, Chateau Goudichaud, Chateau La Fleur des Graves, Graves de Vayres

Mr Francois de Coninck, Chateau Junayme, Chateau Canon, Fronsac

Mr Henri Brut, Clocher Notre Dame de Marceille, Clocher de Rouffiac, Limoux

Mr Gilles Bousquet, Domaine St Antoine, Minervois

Mlle Pedrol, Chateau Les Pins Cotes de Roussillon, Rivesaltes, Cotes de Roussillon

Mr Jerome Jelonch, Le Faite de St Mont, Plaimont

Domaine Edmond Rentz, Alsace

Domaine du Vieux Chateau, Daniel-Etienne Defaix, Chablis

Other countries

Ms Yngvild Steytler, Kaapzicht, Steytler, Stellenbosch, South Africa

Mr Erik Scheerlinck, Tsinandali, Saparavi Marani, Mukuzani from Georgia, Tamaioasa from Romania, Enira from Bulgaria

Mr Pedro Azcunaga, Azcunaga, Mont Michel, Navarra and Cava, Spain

Home & Passion Restaurant

These days we are traveling in Belgium to do some wine tasting with our clients. Once a year, one of our clients, Roger & Luc De Smedt, a distributor located in Brussels, invites his clients for a wine tasting in a restaurant or a wine shop with the producers he represent and then finally at his shop.

We are here for four days, from Saturday November 8th to Tuesday, November 11th. Today we are in the Home & Passion restaurant, a French traditional cuisine restaurant, where the Italian Chef Pino, from Sicilia, leads the kitchen. We were four producers: Alain Vigier from Bordeaux, France, Daniel-Etienne Defaix from Chablis France, Kaapzicht from Stellenbosch, South Africa and us, Quevedo from Douro, Portugal.

At around 7pm we had dinner at the Home & Passion and after we went to a decoration shop also for showing our wines to the people that were visiting the shop and buying decoration stuff for Christmas.

Quevedo Wines

And as there is no Christmas without Port Wine, 7 weeks before Christmas is probably the right moment to think about which Port to choose. And why the tasting at the decoration shop? Well, a bottle could also be seen as a decoration piece while the wine is in its ageing process!! Or maybe the right reason is that Luc is friend of the decoration shop owner!

It has been a fruitfulness experience and I hope to come back to you once again during these days.

Óscar Quevedo

Starting for Portuguese media, I use to go to Revista Blue Wine to keep me updated about the news of the wine sector in Portugal. Revista Blue Wine is also monthly hard cover magazine you kind find in the main news-stands.

As blogging from a winery is something really new in Portugal, started by Cortes de Cima during the first half of 2008, and followed by us in July, I always want to know what our colleagues and friends are doing. And they always have some fun stories and news to share. Visit them here.

I could not finish this first post about what blogs I use to read without mention my main source of information. Catavino or if you prefer Ryan and Gabriella Opaz are the definitive bloggers writing about Portuguese and Spanish wines. Beside their deep knowledge about Iberian wines and food, they are also two nice Americans. Visit them!

I will come back soon with some news from Belgium.

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?

So, I am Oscar Jr., I was born in 1983, in Viseu, Portugal, city where my parents had lived for some years before I had come to the world. But the really town of my life is S. João da Pesqueira, as we like to say, the heart of the Douro Valley. Almost all my youth was spent there, between vines and barrels, where my parents, my grandparents and my great grandparents have been doing Port Wine.

In 2001 I went to Porto for the University. I studied Economics in the University of Porto until 2005, when I started my career in finance in the Portuguese bank BPI. One year later I went to the center of the Europe to work also in Finance in Switzerland and I am now working in Madrid, Spain.

These five years I lived in Porto marked a special period of my life, where I lived through really amazing experiences. I had the opportunity to make very good friendships (Bruno and Pedro who are also blogging here are just a small example). But the University also stands out because was during this period I started to understand the business of my family. I figured out wine is not just romance as you also have some drama and pain. I also started to drink wine more often and not just in the special moments I was used to drink when living with my parents.

I started to miss the Douro and to feel I just was fulfilled when was walking through the vines or riding the bicycle uphill and downhill. Even nowadays is hard for me to spend more than one or two weekends away from my little town. My friends say I love it because I am not living there. Well, I have to find it out!

Oscar Quevedo