Category: Wine News

The ideal wine for christmas

THE IDEAL WINE FOR CHRISTMAS

Every year around this time, general magazines and some newspapers only remember the issue to publish a “wine special” that end up being as fake as the huge melons of some pornstars like Nicolette Shea (I hope you will excuse the comparison but it must be as vulgar as those “wine specials”). In some cases, it may turn out to be a pandering catalog, usually suggested by the advertising department for wineries to insert ads.

But now, speaking from one wine lover to another, are there really “ideal wines” for the holidays?

TO TASTE AT HOME IN A RELAXED WAY

Tasting wines, extracting from them all the sensations, visual, olfactory and palate, is an exercise that requires, in the first place, a certain practice, but also focus, calm and relaxation. The rectitude of our homes and the luxury of time allow us to embrace the challenge with the necessary attention. We had the help of the sommelier, wine writer and critic of Revista de Vinhos, Rodolfo Tristão, a true connoisseur of portuguese wines, that leaves some recommendations for the wine tasting to be both didactic and fun. And recommends some harmonization with dishes you can do at home. choose the wine from the cellar that you have at home. If you want some special wine, get it from the online…

ESSENTIAL TIPS TO ORGANIZE A WINE CELLAR

Are you tired of having bottles scattered around different spaces in your apartment? The wines accumulate disorganized and it is time to “put the house in order”? Do you want to buy wines to have in your home and share with family and friends, but you don’t know how to keep them properly? Or do you simply want to make a wine cellar but don’t know very well where to start? If so, these tips are for you. Let’s do it! WHAT CARE SHOULD I HAVE ON THE WINE CELLAR? Most people, especially those who live in big cities, do not have today the ideal conditions to keep wine at home. Also because of that, a little bit around the…

PORT WINE

It was the president of the IVDP, Gilberto Igrejas, who best described it: a “wine tasting, many of which have already surpassed a century of history”, in which producers and tasters of “various age groups, including many young people”, who “manage to give a new dynamic to the way of communicating Port Wine”, were present. This is what tasting is all about”, as Bento Amaral, cicerone and brilliant host summed up – the youngest are entrusted with the task of continuing this unique legacy. As an introduction, Bento Amaral introduced the producers and winemakers of the various houses present, referring to them as “guardians of time, in charge of bringing to present and future generations the wines made by our…

PHILOSOPHICAL MADEIRA

There are wines that can be prose and poetry, that can be villains of time or guardians of memories. They challenge our understanding and sometimes make us feel like gods, sometimes ordinary mortals. At least once in our life we should taste wines like the ones presented in the second edition of the “Madeira Wine Experience”, at the Palácio de Seteais, in Sintra. “The dream is wine, it is foam, it is yeast…” We are assailed by these words of António Gedeão in the famous “Pedra Filosofal”. Also like him, a kind of alchemist poet, so many who make wine seem to want to provide pure and enchanting poetry. The difference is that they often do not write or pronounce…

ENVIRONMENTALLY AWARE WINES

At Quinta da Boa Esperança, the experimentation and production of wines in small volumes are an option, even if it means stretching the number of references in the portfolio. After all, the variety found on the various slopes, expositions, nuance of the soils and varieties compels this. It was called Antigo Casal do João Dias, until, in 2014, Artur Gama and Eva Moura Guedes acquired the property. Here in Zibreira, in a valley of slopes, the vineyard is a constant wherever you look. It combines proximity to the Atlantic, which is less than 20 km away, with Montejunto to the northeast, so that the vineyards, on slopes with a sunny exposure, take advantage of the sun’s rays that caress them…

WINE AND SPICY: HARMONIZATION

When it gets really hot, with what wine can we put out the fire? Common sense dictates that wines with less alcohol and more freshness are the ideal. Does the science behind the good harmonizations agree? First of all, it is good to know that the sensation of hotness is the deliberate aggression of some plants and fruits to their devourers little relevant for the perpetuation of these species. Along its evolution, a part of the genus of Capsicum plants, which includes peppers and chilis, such as piripiris (in Portugal and Mozambique), chili peppers (in Brazil), gindungos (Angola), habaneros (Mexico) or tabasco (USA), among others, besides black pepper or black pepper, as it is known in Brazil, the latter of…