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At its most basic level, wine tastings are a fun experience. We check out the wine’s color, smell its bouquet, and most importantly, we taste the wine. Universally, this is accepted as the essential steps of tasting; but the irony is, we all have different sensations, feelings and experiences towards each and every wine. Some find blackberries where others are thinking about plums; some describe a wine as mineral and others say it’s earthy. And does the alcohol affect your month in the say way it affects mine? And acidity, are your taste buds more sensitive than mine?

We interpret the winemaker’s masterpiece in different ways, which logically, allows each and every one of us to discern what we enjoy and what we’d rather dump down our kitchen sink. Even the same wine, tasted by different people, can receive widely different reactions.

And so the story goes with our Quevedo Vintage Port 2007, recently tasted by Jay Miller of the Wine Advocate. Jay tasted a large cross-section of the 2007 Vintage currently in the US market, scoring our Port at 88 points. On the other hand, Wine Enthusiast, another American wine magazine, rated it at 92 points, while Roy Hersh, considered by some as the top Port wine expert in the US, gave it a 93/95+.

So I was wondering, what qualifies as an 88 point Port wine for Wine Advocate? Here are some examples:

We’re pretty happy to be in the company of such fine wines. Critics and points are nice, but what matters more to us is what you our customer think of this wine. Therefore, we invite you to visit our winery to share a glass of our Vintage 2007 with our family; or if you stumble across our wine in another part of the world, please don’t hesitate to leave your thoughts here.

But better yet, tell us what you think a point tastes like? What do points mean to you? How do they shape your experience with the wines that you love! We want to know!

Oscar

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The bad weather of the last week-end left a trace of destruction almost everywhere in Portugal. After landslides reported in Azores, heavy rain in the north and center of Portugal with floods in the Tejo valley, in the Douro the troblemaker was the wind. At our winery, the most affected part was the roof of our stainless steel bins cellar. 30% of it flu away. And guess where the pieces of the roof flu to? Right, to the middle of the vineyards!

This is definitively not a big issue, only material damage reported. But we will need some weeks to repair our winery and restore the coverage of the different building affected.

And as this was not enough, yesterday we lost the phone connection…

If you are visiting us these days, you already know what is waiting for you!

Oscar

Now the challenge: with which music would you pair the Vintage 2007?

Cheers,

Pedro

A couple of weeks ago, when I visited London, I participated in a very special tasting at Crusting Pipe, co-organized by two Brit friends I met last year in the Douro, Derek and Alex. Wine has this attractive, easily puts a group of people together to discuss and to have fun. And I enjoyed a lot while tasting some old Ports, the majority were Colheitas, which are something the British are not familiar with. In my opinion almost all the Ports we tasted performed well, some great stuff was on the table. This is the list of Colheitas:
- 1934 Dalva
- Imperial Hedges & Butler maybe from the 1930s (on the photo)
- 1965 Krohn
- 1968 Niepoort
- 1975 Quevedo
- 1994 Niepoort

But at the end of the tasting, when I asked them to make this video and to share with us what did they learn that night, Thursday, 11th February, the answers were astonishing. They don’t like Colheitas? I couldn’t believe what I was hearing…. We all know that the British market prefers Ports aged in the bottle rather than aged in oak. But does that mean they have to dislike Ports aged in the wood?

All in all this was a GREAT night (which finished with a beer (because of Scottish customs…). and I also met four new friends of Port: Muriel, Ben, Chris and Jacob. What did I learn that night? Get-togethers are great opportunities to meet your friends and share some glasses of Port. And if you invite me, I’ll try to go

Oscar

Last week, while I was in London, I went to an event organized by Viniportugal to promote Portuguese wines. Its name is 50 Great Portuguese Wines and it goes on its 5th edition. Since 2005 Viniportugal has been inviting, every year, a wine expert to taste and select 50 wines that he or she considers best represents wines from Portugal. This year the selected master was Sarah Ahmed. During the tasting I asked Sarah to share with us what she forecasts for the Portuguese wines for the next years.

Oscar

P.S. I had also the pleasure to meet Judy Kendrick and her crew at the tasting! Judy rocks!

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I do not know its name, does anyone can help?

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!

The first to guess it will get a free bottle of Quevedo Rose Port next time he/she visit us!

Oscar

How many of you can recognize this road? And how many of you know where this dam is located? It has been raining a lot here and the soils can’t absorb more water. So all the water goes down the hill, quickly reaching the streams that take the water to the Douro river.

Is this damaging the vineyards? No, but I would say that we do not need more water for now, at least until March or April.

Oscar

Oscar