Wine

The yellow house farm

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Quinta da casa Amarela

We called Laura Regueiro, the owner of Quinta da Casa Amarela (the yellow house farm), to apologize for being a little late. It is easy to misjudge travel times in the Douro valley. Distances are short but the narrow, winding roads make us slow down and admire the landscape. “You don’t need to rush,” Laura said gracefully, “take your time to enjoy the beautiful drive.”

As soon as we arrived, she came to greet us with her husband, Gil. They taught history in Oporto for almost three decades. Every Saturday, they packed their bags and their children, Gil junior and Sónia, to drive to Quinta da Casa Amarela for the weekend. In 1979, the couple moved to the Douro valley to focus on producing wine.

The quinta, located in Vale de Cambres, belongs to the Regueiro family since 1875. It was from Vale the Cambres that the first Douro wines were exported to England in the 16th century. Initially, the wine was called “vinho de embarque” (shipping wine), later it was renamed port wine.

“Port is the supreme expression of the Douro valley,” Laura explains. “My grandfather used to say that port wine is so perfect that we should kneel before drinking it to show our reverence.”

“In 2000, our son convinced us to produce table wines; or “tranquil wines” as the Douro people sometimes call them,” said Laura. We tried a wonderful rosé with impeccable acidity and a sublime reserve white with tropical fruit aromas, great freshness and persistence in the palate. The wine labels are decorated with ladybugs. Laura loves these colorful insects because they help control the pests that plague the vineyards. This control is particularly important because some of the vines are about 80-years old. They produce extraordinary grapes that lend complexity and character to the wines.

The production process, managed by Jean-Hugues Gros, a French enologist who moved to the Douro valley, relies on traditional methods. The grapes are still treaded by foot to the sound of an accordion, just like in the old days. But the wines are modern, interesting and elegant. The reserve red wine is a great examplar of the quinta’s style.

Laura loves gathering friends around the dinner table. Her duck rice is legendary. “Food and wine stimulate great conversations,” she says. When Paulo Rodrigues from Quinta do Regueiro came for lunch, he brought some bottles of his green wine made with Alvarinho grapes. During lunch, Laura mixed the Alvarinho with her white wine. The results were so interesting that they created a wine called II Terroir that combines grapes from their two quintas. Laura is also collaborating with a maverick wine maker from Alentejo called Paulo Laureano. Their PL/LR wine marries grapes from the plains of Alentejo and the Douro mountains.

We stayed until late talking to Laura and Gil as if we had known them forever. Happily married for 50 years, they are preparing the 6th generation to continue the work that began in 1875: to turn some of the best grapes in the Douro valley into wines that are perfect to gather friends around the dinner table.

Quinta da Casa Amarela is located at Riobom in Lamego, tel. 254-666-200, email quinta@quinta-casa-amarela.com. Click here for their website.

 

 

The magic of the harvest

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Harvest at Monte da Ravasqueira

Most days come and go without leaving a trace. But the harvest day we spent at Monte da Ravasqueira in Alentejo is unforgettable.

The sun, disappointed that we didn’t stay by the hotel pool worshiping its radiant glory, sulked behind clouds. It was just as well. The star’s temper tantrum brought cooler temperatures and created softer shadows that made the fields of Alentejo look like paintings. Monte da Ravasqueira was gorgeous, its white and blue buildings contrasting with the colors of the vines, already changing from their Summer greens to the browns and yellows of the Autumn season.

Mário Gonzaga, our genial guide at Ravasqueira, equipped us with straw hats, gloves and scissors. Then, we followed enologists Pedro Pereira Gonçalves and Vasco Rosa Santos, the magicians who turn grape juice into wine, through the glorious fields. On the way to our vineyard, we passed by the famed Vinha das Romãs, a plot planted with Touriga Franca and Syrah that produces wines with hints of the pomegranates that once grew there.

We received a large box and were assigned a row planted with Petit Verdot. An accordion player made our work lighter by serenading us while we picked the grapes. Wine grapes are very different from table grapes. Their berries are small, so they have much more skin than water, resulting in more intense flavors and aromas.

Once our box was brimming with fruit, we walked over to the winery where Mário talked about the wine-production process. The grape juice has to be kept at 16 degrees Celsius so that the yeast in the grapes starts the fermentation process that turns fruit sugar into alcohol. The cellar was filled with strong wine aromas. “These are primary aromas,” explained Mário. “They need to be abundant at this stage because some will dissipate over time. The yeast-like secondary aromas are produced by the fermentation process. The tertiary aromas come from aging. The estate’s best wines age for three years in oak barrels and two years in bottle.”

As we walked back to the center of the estate, Mário showed us a Roman marble tombstone shaped like a wine barrel. “We think that here lies our first enologist,” says Mário. “He wanted to sleep forever close to his vineyards.”

The country-style lunch was wonderful: salads made with fava beans and chickpeas, duck rice, and a mille-feuilles of red berries for dessert.  We tried to pick our favorite wine. The beautiful rosé, the enticing family reserve white? The luscious red from Vinhas das Romãs? It is impossible to decide.

There was much more to see and do during the afternoon. As the sun began to set, we were greeted by a choir from Alentejo. Three rows of farmers sang in harmony about love and loss, work and rest, food and wine.

Dinner was a feast. Our appetite was wetted with the stunning Ravasqueira sparkling great reserve. Then, an intense red Alicante Bouschet paired perfectly with the savory coriander soup and a delicious codfish with cornbread. The dessert, an irresistible chocolate praliné, came with a glamorous late harvest and a luxurious port-style wine made at Ravasqueira.

The following day, it was time to go back to normal life. But we couldn’t bear to lose the state of enchantment we felt in Alentejo. So we said a silent incantation to keep the magic going: “we’ll return to the harvest.”

Monte da Ravasqueira is located near Arraiolos, tel. 266-490-200, email ravasqueira@ravasqueira.com. Click here for information about how to schedule a visit.

The Dão wine region

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Dão

The Dão river lends its name to one of the most important wine regions in Portugal. Demarcated in 1908, it has granitic soils and remarkable indigenous varietals like the red Touriga Nacional and the white Encruzado.

Dão wines are full of character, much like the people who live in this area. They can be brash when they’re young, but they age beautifully, acquiring elegance and complexity.

It is not unusual to find Dão wines that keep improving for several decades. The legendary 1964 vintage is a great example of this longevity.

Some say that the least happy people in heaven come from the Dão region. For they regret having left behind a few great bottles of wine.

A superb vermouth

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Soberbo Vermouth

The summer winds brought a wonderful gift, a vermouth called Soberbo, the Portuguese word for superb. It is made with white port by Poças, a centenarian port-wine house, according to an updated version of a 1930s recipe.

The sweetness of the white port balances the bitterness of the aromatic herbs to create an harmonious vermouth. Enjoying a glass of this nectar is the perfect way to prepare our palates for an elegant dinner.

Click here for the Poças web site.

Paulo Laureano

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Paulo Lauriano

Now we know how it feels to go from purgatory to heaven. After many hours of delays in Newark, we arrived in Lisbon and drove to Vidigueira to meet with Paulo Laureano, a famous Portuguese enologist. The encounter was five years in the making because he is a busy man and our schedules never intersected.

Paul greeted us at the door of his winery with the easy smile of a man who has found his place in the world. Many harvests ago he graduated in enology in Évora. After an internship in Australia, he was invited to teach at the university. But soon he became involved with so many wineries that he left academia to practice enology full time. He bottled the first wines under his name in 1999. Since then, he has produced a steady stream of remarkable nectars.

Our visit started with a tour of the winery. “There is no technology here,” he says proudly. “Our work is all done in the vineyards. We use old vines and we harvest the grapes by hand, that is our secret.”

Paulo is passionate about the terroir of Vidigueira. He explains to us how the hard schist soils give minerality and freshness to the wines. How the winds travel from the sea to Vidigueira to bring humidity. How the slopes of the terrain create different exposures to the sun. How the varietals change when planted in this soil. And how the indigenous varietal Tinta Grossa creates wines like no others.

Since wines cannot be understood without drinking them, Paulo took us to a tasting room that overlooks the vineyards. We started with a white wine produced from old vines made from Antão Vaz, Arinto and Fernão Pires. We would have been happy continuing drinking it, but there were more wines to taste.

Paulo showed us two wonderful wines he makes for the U.S. market. When his long-time U.S. distributor visited with his little daughter, Ema, the girl asked whether she could have her own vineyard. Remembering this endearing moment, Paulo called the white and red blends Ema’s vineyard.

Next. our glasses filled with an Old Vines Private Selection white. It showcases the brilliance of the Antão Vaz from Vidigueira. “Antão Vaz can be heavy and boring but here in Vidigueira it is always interesting and elegant,” says Paulo.

It is time for two more reds. The Old Vines Private Selection is smooth and refined, an harmonious combination of Aragonês, Trincadeira, Alicante Bouchet and Touriga Nacional.  Our tasting ended with fireworks: we tried one of the 5,000 bottles of Tinta Grossa produced in 2015. It is a remarkable wine full of depth and character.

Wherever you are, if you see a bottle of Paulo Laureano’s wine grab it without hesitation. And then you too can have a taste of these heavenly wines made in the unique terroir of Vidigueira.

Paulo Laureano’s winery is located in Monte Novo da Lisboa, Vidigueira, tel. 284-437-060.

 

 

The perfect wine party

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Goliardos

A group of wine connoisseurs called “Os Goliardos” turned their love of wine into a business–they distribute interesting artisanal wines, made with passion and respect for the land.

Every year in July, the Goliardos invite a group of their favorite wineries to showcase their wines at an event called Vinho ao Vivo (Wine Live). The setting is À Margem, an esplanade by the Tagus river with a view to the tower of Belém on one side and the monument to the discoveries on the other.

Portuguese wineries share the stage with producers from France, Spain, Germany and Italy.  There are musicians serenading our ears and food producers filling our bellies with black-pork prosciutto, sausages, oysters, cheese and much more. It is the perfect wine party. If you missed it this year, mark your calendar for next year.  And get a few bottles from the Goliardos’ wine list, they’ll make the wait seem much shorter.

You can find Os Goliardos at Rua General Taborda, nº91, in Lisbon’s Campolide neighborhood. They can be reached by phone (213 462 156) or email info@osgoliardos.com. Click here for their website.

The Marquis of Pombal and his dessert wine

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Almost everyone who visits Lisbon runs into the statue of Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, the Marquis of Pombal. It stands on top of a giant pedestal facing the downtown neighborhood that the Marquis helped rebuild after the 1755 earthquake.

The Marquis had a profound influence on the production of port wine.  In 1757, he ordered the first classification of port-producing vineyards, making the Douro one of the world’s oldest demarcated wine regions. He also founded the Royal Company which controlled the exports of port to England and Brazil. These measures were unpopular, but they greatly improved the quality of the port produced.

We wonder whether, after doing what he thought was right for the Douro region, the Marquis had second thoughts. He owned a large wine estate in Oeiras, in the outskirts of Lisbon, that produced an excellent fortified wine. But according to the rules he helped create, he couldn’t call it port wine. Instead, the wine was known as Carcavelos, after one of the region’s seaside villages.

An early coup for Carcavelos wines came in 1752. King Dom José gathered a collection of luxurious gifs chosen to impress the emperor of China. One of these gifts was a red velvet box with two bottles of Carcavelos wine.

Half a century later, the winds of history interceded in favor of the Carcavelos wine. When Napoleon’s troops invaded the north of Portugal, it became difficult to export port wine to England. Carcavelos wine emerged as an excellent alternative, gaining fame and prestige among British wine connoisseurs.

In the 1930s, the Carcavelos vines started to be uprooted to make space for suburban homes. As a result, wine production dwindled. In 1997, the Oeiras city council decided to invest in the preservation of the vineyards that were left, saving this historical wine from oblivion. The city also restored the palace that belonged to the Marquis of Pombal.

If you’re looking for an outing near Lisbon, a visit to this palace is a great choice. You can stroll through elegant salons and manicured gardens. And you can try a glass of Carcavelos wine. Drier than port, it has enticing aromas and exquisite flavors that enchant the senses. A sip of this nectar is a trip back in time, a taste of the wine enjoyed by a Chinese emperor and served at the lavish parties staged by the Marquis of Pombal . 

The Palace of the Marquis of Pombal is located at Largo Marquês de Pombal, in Oeiras, tel. 214.430.799. You can reach Oeiras by taking the Lisbon/Cascais train.

The elegant intensity of Dona Matilde’s wines

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Quinta D. Matilde Composit

It was an unexpected honor–to spend a lazy afternoon with Manuel Ângelo Barros, an icon of the Douro valley. We met in the terrace of his home, sheltered from the hot sun, cooled by a timid breeze. Below, the waters of the Douro river tried to stand still so they could eavesdrop on our conversation.

The landscape reminded us that producing Douro wines is an extraordinary feat. Generations of men and women toiled in freezing Winters and scorching Summers to build the terraces that support the vines and prevent the soil from washing into the river.

Manuel’s family owned two legendary port-wine houses: Barros, the family brand, and Kopke, the oldest port-wine house, established in 1638. They also owned a portfolio of vineyards amassed over the last century. The third Barros generation decided to sell the brands and the vineyards. But once the sale closed, Manuel missed the magic of having land that turns water into wine. He managed to buy back one of the Barros properties in 2006, Quinta Dona Matilde, famous for its high-quality grapes, produced in schist soils near the river. Originally purchased by his grandfather in 1927 and named after his grandmother, the quinta is a place where Manuel spent much of his youth.

The table was set with “bola de carne,” a traditional meat pie, because Dona Matilde produces gastronomic wines that are best enjoyed with some food. Most wine makers like to explain the enological properties that make their wines distinct. Instead, Manuel filled our glasses in silence, letting the wines speak for themselves. Whenever we asked a question, he paused to reflect. Then he answered in a gracious, literary Portuguese, choosing his words with the same care he devotes to making wine.

Manuel is proud of the team he assembled at Dona Matilde. His younger son, Filipe Barros, plays a key role as marketing director. The viticulturist José Carlos Oliveira takes care of the quinta’s 28 hectares, which include 60-year-old vines that produce wines with great complexity and character. Enologist João Pissara strives to use production methods that highlight the outstanding qualities of the Dona Matilda grapes. To make the reserve red wine, he favors the traditional method of treading the grapes by foot in the quinta’s old granite tanks.

We tried two whites and two reds. Even though the estate has low altitude and a sunny exposure, the wines are balanced with great freshness and acidity. Harvesting the grapes early is key to producing these wonderful results.

Each Dona Matilda wine has a distinct voice. But they all have the same quiet intensity and aristocratic elegance that make Manuel such a pleasure to be with.

Click here for Dona Matilda’s web site.

 

A great beginning

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Chip Dry Port

Beginnings are hard. We don’t know how to pen the first sentences of a novel, compose the introduction of a sonata, or craft the opening scene of a play. But we do know an elegant way to start a dinner party. Get a bottle of Taylor Chip Dry port and chill it in the fridge. When the guests arrive, pour everyone a glass of this marvelous white port. Then,  toast to a great beginning.

The magic of a dinner at the Yeatman

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Yeatman restaurant

At the end of our dinner at the Yeatman last November, chef Ricardo Costa gave us an envelope sealed with wax stamped with the hotel’s Y symbol. We brought the envelope home where it’s been sitting on our desk. A couple of days ago, we woke up to the sight of grey skies and the sound of howling winds. We reached for the envelope and broke the seal, hoping to summon some of the magic of our Fall evening at the Yeatman. Inside, we found the dinner’s menu.

We recalled that our meal started softly, with a cup of tea made from kombu, an Asian algae. Then, there were oysters with foie gras and an apple gel that accentuated their  briny taste. They harmonized with a glass of bright, sparking wine from Murganheira. The meal continued merrily with a miniature piece, three inventive combinations of algae and tuna.

This preamble was followed by a chicken oyster–a small oval cut with intense flavor. It was delightfully roasted, seasoned with dehydrated chili pepper, served with a mushroom broth and topped with a cheese sauce.

Beautiful slices of lírio, a fish from the Azores, arrived on top of a cylinder bathing is sea foam and decorated with pearls.  The pearls, cylinder and foam were all made of cucumber. The delicate flavors paired perfectly with a glass of Quinta de Baixo Vinhas Velhas, a great white wine made by Dirk Niepoort from old vines in Bairrada.

The white wine refreshed our palate so that we could fully appreciate the next course: a succulent lobster with cauliflower puré and a whimsical bloody Mary made from lobster jus. Then, more of our favorite flavors gathered on the plate: xarem, a polenta-like preparation popular in Algarve, topped with a corn cream, a cockle called berbigão, black-pork prosciutto, egg, and a coriander broth.

A refined bouillabaisse arrived at the table, meticulously prepared with imperador fish accompanied by small, flavorful shrimps from the Portuguese coast and dehydrated algae. What would Marcel Pagnol think if he saw Marseille’s rustic bouillabaisse  prepared with the artistry of a Cartier jeweler?

A glass of a great red from the Dão region produced by Quinta do Perdigão heralded the arrival of the luxurious meat dishes. First, succulent veal with spring onions, Jerusalem artichokes. Then, crispy roasted piglet with spices and tropical fruits.

The meal ended with a delightful persimmon filled with pistachio sorbet topped with a cream of vanilla and saffron. But this was a deceptive ending  because soon another pleasing dessert arrived: blueberries with mascarpone ice-cream and kafir limes. And just when we thought it was time to leave, our waiter arrived with a serving cart full of irresistible chocolates, caramels and nuts. It was an epic dinner!

We finished reading the menu and looked up. The wind had waned and the sky was blue.

The Yeatman is located at Rua do Choupelo, (Santa Marinha), in Vila Nova de Gaia. Click here for the hotel’s website.