Oscar

For several reasons Sweden is a very special market for wine:

• State control of ALL retail alcohol sales of over 3.5% ABV
• high taxes on alcohol beverages
• restriction in the number of brands and types of wines listed on the shelves
• new launches of wine only if Systembolaget (Swedish wine retail monopoly) wants
• offers to the Systembolaget have to be submitted through a local importer
• different types of shops, some very small in which you have to ask a member of the staff to bring you the bottles you want
• any kind of discounts are forbidden
• all products have the same treatment, so the order of the wines on the shelves are random, in some places a wine can be on the top, while in others on the bottom;
• sales representatives from the importer/ winery are not allowed to talk to managers of Systembolaget shops

Well, these are the rules. It is not easy to get your wines there, only one wine for each category/ type is listed, for instance Douro Reserve or White Port. Actually, only this year, for the first time, we had one of our wines listed in the Swedish Systembolaget shops. There was a tender for listing Rose Port during the Summer. As winners of this tender, Quevedo Rose Port was the first Rose Port ever to be sold on the Swedish market. I was proud of that and couldn’t miss this chance to take a photo of our Port on the shelf. So before the end of the listing period (May- August) there I was, in a Systembolaget shope in Stockholm. I’m not sure if it is allowed to take photos of the stores. I didn’t dare to ask, but if in the next weeks you don’t see any photo here, it is because Systembolaget asked me to remove them.

Oscar

Enjoy, at least as much as I did!

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

Related articles by Zemanta

• vintage 2010 - early august update… (burgundy-report.com)
• The Non-Summer of 2010 (wine-blog.org)

1. Children still know from where chickens and potatoes come from and what a real goat looks like

2. Nature is almost untouched with wild animals living just in the outskirts of towns and villages

3. Dancing with an African girl is a bigger lesson than a whole week in Ibiza

4. They make the best no-alcoholic beverage in the world: bissap (have some with me to Portugal!)

5. It smells like earth, species and happy people

Lets continue this list, leave your sentence and I’ll add it to the post.

Oscar

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

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

In the center and north of Europe and US, regions that represent over 90% of Port Wine consumption, it is pretty common to find in restaurants, at least, one or two references of Port Wine. Actually, I dare to say that in Holland, Belgium, UK and maybe even Denmark, good restaurants have a broader offer of Port Wine than Portuguese restaurants do (for a Portuguese native it’s not hard to find an explanation for this, as we love to consume everything that is not national; whisky rocks in Portugal).

However, in the same article, you could read “Premium Tawnies should be priced like other wines, not spirits! Ridiculous markups (more than 4 times costs) are the surest means of killing sales.” This is probably right, even though I am not the best person to talk about it, as a producer I want my wine to be available at the lowest price. Is there anyone to defend restaurants?!?

Oscar