Pathogenic fungi are among agriculture’s most durable and destructive pests. Botrytis Bunch Rot (Botrytis cinerea) in grape and strawaberry, Early Blight in tomato and potato, Powdery Mildew in grape, cucurbit, lettuce, Downy mildew, Late Blight (Phytophthora infestans), to name but a very few, have led to the development of an equally vast array of fungicides. Many are toxic, in varying degrees, to a broad spectrum of aquatic life, beneficial insects including honey bees and wasps, beneficial soil microbes, non-targeted crops and flora biodiversity in general, not to mention farm workers, their children, those with compromised immune systems, and eventually the consumer at large. Over the years the fungicide industry has become increasingly regulated with the resulting ban of a long list of formerly promising products. Hence, the search goes on for new and innovative bio-chemical fungicidal interventions to meet the ever-pressing demand for sustainable crop yields to feed a hungry world.
Indeed, it is not too much to say that the modern history of fungicidal products well outnumber the targeted fungi by factors of ten. The reason is at once both simple and bewilderingly complex. All agricultural pests, whether virus, bacteria, insect or fungi, have multiple growth stages, multiple defenses and weaknesses at each of these stages, all have a local agri-cultural ecosystems where their pestilential fortunes may rise or fall; they frequently require vectors and all have various and specific adaptive responses, importantly, genetic responses. Take a look at the University of California’s Integrated Pest Management list of fungicides for wine grapes alone (partially reproduced here). Note the variety of Chemical Classes and of Modes of Action. Each responds to some aspect or combination of aspects of the targeted fungi’s life cycle, whether systemic or by contact.
Now, to go a bit deeper into just one fungal pathogen, Botrytis cinerea, the causal agent of Bunch Rot, I turn to a truly magnificent scientific paper, Alternatives to synthetic fungicides for Botrytis cinerea management in vineyards found in a recent issue of the Australian Journal of Grape and Wine Research. The paper exhaustively recounts multi-dimensional, non-synthetic approaches to this single pathogen. To begin with, there is biological control, itself subdivided into ‘classical, inundative and conservation’. To define each in turn, I quote (pg.187):
Classical: “The intentional introduction of an exotic, usually co-evolved biological control agent for permanent establishment and long term pest control.”
Inundative: “The use of living organisms to control pests when control is achieved exclusively by the released organisms themselves.”
Conservation: “Modification of the environment or existing practices to protect and enhance specific natural enemies or other organisms to reduce the effect of pests.”
We may then read about Essential and Mineral Oils, Plant Hormones, Abiotic Stimulants, and Plant Extracts, Compost Extracts, Microbial Induction, Canopy Management, and Local Environment Manipulations. The paper concludes,
“A change from current viticultural practices, heavily dependent on synthetic fungicides, is inevitable. Fungicide resistance, market and regulatory pressure regarding residues and concerns of environmental and human health are increasing, so new management techniques will need to be adopted.”
As is abundantly evident, the matter of fungus control properly becomes a creative, open-ended agricultural project of applying as many relevant biological parameters and mechanisms as possible at once. And this project is by no means limited to Botrytis. The concept of fungicide resistance is a case in point. Whether through misapplication, overuse, or the absence of an integrated pest management program, resistance is, to be sure, given a helping hand. But even under more responsible agricultural pest management regimes, resistance to fungicides is a constant threat. From the paper (though slightly outdated) Understanding fungicide resistance, by Robert Beresford
“The change in the pathogen from being sensitive to a fungicide to being resistant involves a genetic change which is passed on to successive generations of the fungus. To understand how resistance arises we must think of the pathogen in a crop as a population consisting of a mixture of strains which differ in their sensitivity to the fungicide. Some strains in the population may be so resistant that they cannot be controlled by normal application rates of the fungicide. Use of the fungicide therefore kills the sensitive strains but not the resistant ones, and over a period of time the resistant ones come to dominate.”
So, in light of all the above, and on this, the eve of Earth Day, I would like to bring to readers attention a novel research invention currently undergoing field trials. The inventors: DE SEIXAS BOAVIDA FERREIRA, Ricardo Manuel [PT/PT]; Rua Professor Reinaldo Dos Santos 12-2º D (PT). VALADAS DA SILVA MONTEIRO, Sara Alexandra [PT/PT]; Rua Professor Moisés Amzalan 16-5º B (PT). NASCIMENTO TEIXEIRA, Artur Ricardo [PT/PT]; Rua João De Barros 5-4º B (PT). BORGES LOUREIRO, Virgílio [PT/PT]. From the patent,
“This invention is related to the extraction of a protein from the seeds, cotyledons or plantlets of Lupinus genus, as well as to the way of producing it in recombinant form and of expressing it in genetically modified plants. Due to the exceptional characteristics exhibited by this protein in what concerns: its potent antifungal and anti-Oomycete activity, which confers great potential to the protein as a fungicide, (2) its strong plant growth promoter activity, particularly notorious on unhealthy or naturally weakened plants, (3) its extreme resistance to denaturation, which allows the use of the protein under field conditions, (4) its great susceptibility to proteolytic attack, which makes it harmless to the environment and nontoxic for man, and (5) its well balanced amino acid composition. It is claimed its use, or of any modification of the protein that maintains its biological properties, as a supplement in human or animal nutrition and as a fungicide, insecticide, growth promoter, fertilizer or in the preparation of genetically modified organisms.”
Currently labeled Problad, how then does this invention differ from chemical fungicides? Absent is toxicity to animals and the environment; no safety intervals are required, neither is protective clothing required; there is little likelihood of the development of fungal resistance; and it is active against a wide range of fungal pathogens. Indeed, of its wide spectrum in vitro tests reveal “It exhibits a potent anti-fungal activity towards all fungal species tested so far (>40)”. (Unpublished broadside) In vivo trials are underway on eight fungal pathogens with, I am told, great success. Fungi and plants are as follows:
Vitis vinifera (grapevine):
- Powdery mildew (Eryshiphe necator)
- Botrytis bunch rot (Botrytis cinerea)
Almond
- Brown rot/Blossum blight (Monilinia laxa)
- Shot Hole (Stigmina carpophila)
Tomato
- Powdery mildew (Leveillula taurica)
- Botrytis cinerea
- Early blight of tomatoes (Alternaria solani)
- Alternaria blight (A. alternata)
Strawberry
- Botrytis Fruit Rot (Botrytis cinerea)
- Powdery mildew (Sphaerotheca macularis)
Cucumber
- Powdery mildew (Erysiphe cichoracearum)
Olive
- Colletotrichum gloeosporioides
- Colletotrichum acutatum
Without getting overly technical, let me add that the Lupinus albus polypeptide isolate, with respect to its anti-fungal properties, binds strongly to chitin and displays chitosanase catalytic activity. Normally associated with the exoskeletons of insects and crustaceans, chitin is also the main structural component of the cell walls of fungi. The product works, therefore, by breaking down this cellular structure and destroying the fungus.
Of its other activity as a growth promoter, its in vivo success rate via field trials, details of its precise recombinant expression in selected crops, and its ability to extend the life of harvested produce, cereal grains, legumes etc., both in storage and in the market, these subjects will have to wait for elaboration in the fullness of time. I am promised, however, that I shall be provided such information. I will be sure to pass it along to my readers.
For further reading on up-to-the-minute research on resistance please visit Fungicide Resistance Action Committee (FRAC).
For an entertaining gloss on Lupins see this.
Admin
We met home winemaker Augusto Silva just as he had returned from the day-long labor of planting a single vine. He had carried heavy bags of soil and a cutting to his vineyard on the North coast of Pico Island, nearly a mile’s walk from his home. There, with an iron pick, he repeatedly struck the boot-shredding volcanic stone until he had pulverized a hole deep enough for the cutting. After tossing in handfuls of dirt, the vine followed, an Azores Verdehlo, for on Pico white grapes, including Arinto and Terrantez, are king. This is Azorean viticulture. And it has been done this way for more than 500 years.
There are no rivers on Pico, and so what weathering of the basalt that has occurred over the island’s geo-history is the direct result of wind and sand transport, rain, changes in temperature, and, most spectacularly, the hand of man. Two types of ’soil’ are generally recognized: chão de lajido, essentially fractured rock with a bit of finer, sandy grit, and bagacina, with just a little bit more unconsolidated material. And that’s it.
From the photos immediately above and below you’ll note the complex network (to the outsider, a maze) of walls of varying heights. The walls serve a triple purpose: to protect the vines from the wind, to warm them, and to demarcate ownership. With the exception of small experimental plots of Cabernet, Merlot and one or two other red varieties, there is no trellising. The vines sprawl across the surface of the rock, the grape bunches, later in the season, propped up by special sticks after the manner of Colares’ Ramisco vineyards.
The typical traditional vineyard architecture may be broken down as follows. First there is the vineyard block, often, but not always, containing plots owned by multiple individuals. These are the highest walls, typically 6 feet and of double thickness, enclosing a series of shorter walled Jarão, themselves subdivisions made up of Canadas, specific groupings of plots. The last division of note here are the Currais, individual plots.
To illustrate this approximately, imagine a checkerboard. That would be the vineyard. The Jarão would be the board halved; a Canada, the rows; and the Curral (singular), the individual checker squares.
However confusing at first glance, the ingenuity of this sheltering geometry is immediately evident when a cold Atlantic wind blows at 25 mph, a common occurrence throughout the Portuguese archipelago.
It is somewhere within this lattice that Augusto Silva toiled this stormy February morning. Upon entering his small adega (I would estimate it capable of producing maybe 400 cases), he told us the story of his economic life. Among the most telling confessions was this:
“In the old days, whoever had an adega like mine would be a very wealthy person, nowadays I make barely enough to pay for the vineyard upkeep.”
Of course, there are numerous winegrowers with marginally better chances to advance their brilliant wines. And the Cooperativa Vitivinícola da Ilha do Pico, the local cooperative, has made great strides in marketing Pico’s award winning wines, this despite the generational gap, a gap which rudely asks what young person would be willing to assume this labor. But of Augusto Silva’s future I cannot guess. I can only wish him well. And to gather friends to celebrate his beautiful wine, a bottle of which he gave me upon our departure. The very bottle he holds in his hand.
Admin
“It’s a crazy world.” Such is the concluding sentiment of André Gomes Pereira, winemaker, businessman and President of VITIOURÉM. He is, too, a bit of a philosopher. I have met many people in preparation for the documentary I will be a part of later this year. And in many of the regions we have visited, Virgilio Loureiro, Nuno Sequeira and yours truly, we have come away with the question unsettled as to whether we are filming the beginning of a renaissance or catching the last light, the sundown of multiple Portuguese (viti)cultures. André Gomes Pereira is exactly the right soul to talk with in moments of doubt. He is a young man who has taken the proper measure of the Ourém wine region’s opportunities. A man of refreshing candor, tireless, his eyes wide open, he is just the fighter for this battle. It is an honor to know him.
Admin Hello, André. This is Ken calling from California.
Andre Gomes Pereira Hi, Ken. It’s good to speak with you again.
Shall we get right to it? So tell me about the organization VITIOUREM.
AGP VITIOUREM is an association that was put together in 2000 with the objective to promote, protect, and to legalize the Medieval wine that has been produced in our region for 800 years. It had become illegal, the winemaking method of the Cistercian monks. We felt it was necessary to create strict rules to preserve the method; but also to preserve our culture as winegrowers, to maintain a unique wine that was disappearing. The work with the politicians through 2000 to 2005 finally got the law changed. We are now allowed to produce that wine.
So the law or exemption was finally passed.
AGP Yes. In 2005 it was approved after five years of fighting against the big lobbies and the politicians that didn’t understand this wine. When the wine goes out to all the markets it is seen as something completely different. But when we talked to the Agricultural Ministry they told us that our wine was not good because it would not have had a productive enough economical impact for grow! But we thought the opposite. It is not necessary to sell one million bottles to make a profit. But this wine is not just about profits. It is also about maintaining our culture and preserving the historical heritage of our ancestors.
What exactly was illegal about the winemaking method?
AGP We couldn’t mix white grapes and red grapes in the percentage the method requires. In Europe we can mix up to 50% white grapes in reds. But we do a different percentage. We mix 80% of white with 20% of red. But before 2005 we were prevented by law from doing that, even though we have been doing it this way for more than 800 years. It was when we as a country entered what was called the European Community at the time, now the European Union (EU), that in one moment, with one stroke of the pen, a once legal wine became illegal. This was because nobody knew of or understood our wine. The moment we were forced to follow the rules out of Brussels, our wine became illegal.
Everyone in our region laughed at the regulation. And when the government said, from the beginning of the 90s, that we were doing a wine that was illegal, my uncle said they had better build a very big prison because you will have to arrest us all. For this is how we have been making wine all of our lives. We are going to do it this way until we die. The region does not know how to produce another wine.
How many growers are we talking about in the region? And where exactly is the region located?
AGP The region is in Ourém; it is very near Fatima, in the center of Portugal. It is about 100 to 150 kilometers from Lisbon, the capitol of Portugal. We are talking about 2,000 to 2,500 winegrowers in the region, all very, very small wine producers. Every family has a small estate where they grow a few vines or have small vineyard. The biggest percentage of what they make is for family consumption, to drink in their houses. So we have a very large number of very small wineries. Making Medieval wine and following all the rules, at the present moment we (Vitiourem) have about 15 producers signed up, with vineyards certified by us. It is through the rule-based certification that the wines may then be labeled and put into the market as Medieval wine.
Do the winegrowers work within a cooperative or are many of them under private labels?
AGP It is private labels. Unfortunately, the cooperative of our region went bankrupt two years ago. Right now it is all the small producers, mainly small producers from the region, except for Quinta do Montalto, my estate, we are one of the biggest. We believe that this wine must prevail in order for the region develop.
How much wine is produced by the average grower? And just how large are their properties, their vineyards?
AGP The average vineyard properties are about a few hundred square meters of land. For Medieval vineyards, we are talking about a maximum of 40,000 square meters, so, 4 hectares at the most per producer. And as far as volume in liters per year for all Medieval wines, right now we are talking about from 100,000 to 200,000 liters. It depends a lot on the year, but it is usually closer to 100,000 than 200,000 liters.
When I was there I saw some growers selling their wines in bulk, I guess you could call it. Folks would come by with various containers and fill up directly from the barrels. And there are others who actually bottle. Can you tell us the economic and cultural differences between those two approaches, and also where in Portugal these Medieval wines may be found?
AGP The wines from the region were traditionally sold in five liter glass containers. But that market is becoming more and more competitive in Portugal. So one of our marketing strategies is to stop selling like that, and start bottling. That will be a huge step forward for the small wineries. They are not use to doing that. They don’t know how to sell the wine in bottles. They have problems with labeling, following all the rules; it is a difficult process, one that VITIOURÉM is helping the small producers with.
In Portugal we find Medieval wines mainly in the immediate region. There are a few shops in Lisbon that carry our wines, but it is mainly in restaurants and hotels, again, mainly in the Fatima and Ourém region, in the center of the country. Because we have small quantities to sell, we haven’t yet made the jump to sell outside Portugal. However, in a year or two, maybe three at the maximum, we will have the need to find new markets outside of Portugal.
For the small producer it would be very expensive to purchase their own bottling equipment, bottles, labels and labelers, and all the rest. How does VITIOURÉM propose to approach this matter? Are bottling machines shared, for example?
AGP That is one way to solve the problem. At the present moment we do the bottling by hand; not the best situation, but it is working. In the future we will have to get organized and have bottling equipment so that everyone can use it. It will always be a small machine we’d use, to minimize the risk. To get organized is the best way; we could then do the investment together.
One of the most important factors to save and sustain your regional wine culture is to receive fair prices. Bottling is a step in this direction. What are the up-front costs for many of the growers? And how much profit do you think is necessary to provide sustainability?
AGP The costs of production are very different from producer to producer. It is difficult to answer that question because the majority or winemakers don’t include the cost of their labor, or that of their families and friends during harvest. Just to calculate costs on what they do to manage the vineyards mainly in the Spring is very difficult as well, because some growers have to pay someone to do the pruning of the vineyards, and there are variable fuel costs and vineyard treatment costs, whether they create their own label, and so on.
And normally producing wine in our region is almost always a second income for the family. It is not their main economic activity. They work in the vineyard or on finishing wines only after the end of their main job, at the end of the day or on the weekends. They can be farmers, but they cannot make a living just from wine. They grow other things, but mainly they are outside agriculture. Agriculture is mainly done for their family’s consumption. So, normally they don’t have their costs calculated. It is very difficult to answer your question.
Of course, we know from experience that we can sell a single bottle of Medieval wine for more than they are use to getting for 5 liters of their wine. It can be as much as five times the usual price. I think this is the only way to have a fair price for their work. It is the only way to survive. Otherwise we cannot compete, not even within Portugal. And then when you look at the low prices of wines in the New World, it is absurd. The price of wines in Chile, for example, is unbelievable. So we cannot sell our wines at those same prices, not even within Portugal.
In Portugal we have high costs of production because often the vineyards are densely planted. Because of this the majority of work done within our vineyards must be done by hand. That alone enormously increases the price.
Yes. I well remember passing through the extraordinarily beautiful Espite Valley just how steep were those hills, how difficult was the terrain to work. We also saw many very old vines, along with many vineyards that appeared to have been simply abandoned. How much has been lost recently, or has your region reached a kind of equilibrium?
AGP The loss of vineyards has not stabilized. In the last 15 years we have lost an enormous number of vineyards in our region. The majority of the people were disappointed with the failure of the cooperative. They did not know where to sell the grapes. I have known that valley when it was almost full of vineyards. Right now if we look to that valley, it is a shame. We don’t see many new vineyards. The process of renovation is not happening. So I hope that we are in time to save that valley, that heritage, that magnificent landscape, with the forests on top, the vineyards in the middle, and the river and vegetable gardens at the base. It would be a tragedy, a pity to lose that landscape. Every year vineyards are being abandoned.
It is also the risk of losing an important part of Portuguese culture itself.
AGP More than 800 years of history, of a tradition, of a technique we may lose just because of economical factors. The wine is unique, it is good, the method is more than good, if I may say, but we are witnessing all over the world the massification of the winemaking process and the styles. To me the world of wine is going in the wrong direction, toward standardization, toward wines without soul, without history. Like Coca Cola or Pepsi, it is becoming always and everywhere the same, every year. To me, as a wine lover, I am becoming more and more tired of those wines, wines that don’t give us anything. Those are the wines prevailing throughout the world. It would be a shame to lose this Medieval wine in Portugal; it would be a great loss to our culture.
I am fighting very hard to stop that process. I would very much like to see again the Espite Valley covered with vineyards. To me, even if it would be in 50 years, I would very much like to see that happen. We will not give up. We will always be fighting against everything and everyone. Even this week [3/28/10] we had some difficulty with the bureaucracy, some paperwork. That is one of our major problems here, the bureaucracy and paperwork.
But I think this year we will have some nice wines to show the world. We are working hard on it.
Getting back to agricultural matters for a moment, can you give us a rundown of the grape varieties of the region, especially those used in Medieval wine?
AGP In Medieval wine we can only use Ferñao Pires, 80% of this white, and for the red, only Trincadeira, 20%. First we crop the white grapes from the vineyards. We take them to the cellar; they are crushed, and the juice is put into a wooden tank to 80% of its capacity. The fermentation starts. We then crop the red, and once back in the cellar, we de-stem and crushed two to three times a day by foot so that they are well macerated. We need to do this so that the grape juice grabs as much of the color and complexity from the skins of the grapes as we can. Then, almost at the end of the fermentation the red juice, with the skins, is put on top of the white juice still finishing its fermentation. The fermentation therefore completely ends with the mixture already made. Now that it is wine, the grape skins sink which is a kind of natural fining process. The wine will not then be good for drinking, but at the end of the year, January, February at the latest, it is ready to be served. In fact, for this year we have begun the bottling process.
And the crushing is still done in lagares?
AGP Yes. And the grapes are still crushed by foot two to three times a day.
And how is the wine aged?
AGP The wine stays in the wooden barrel until late February and shortly thereafter bottled. It should be consumed in the same year of its production and bottling. The 2009 vintage should be consumed by the end of 2010. We have some experience with wines aged in bottle. Things go well for one or two years. But after that wine begins to lose some of its important characteristics that we like. So the wine is meant to be drunk very, very young.
I remember very well the wine from one adega where we also ate figs. A better combination of flavors I have never enjoyed! It was strangely exalting. I’m quite serious. Never have I better experienced a more sublime pairing. And I get around!
AGP Yes, with dry figs and dry raisins it is fantastic. We have a traditional sweet here in the region that has some dry raisins in it. The combination is magnificent. The ranges of dishes that go well with Medieval wine is stunning. From fish to meats, even game meats, it is unbelievable. Dishes very strong with olive oils, sometimes difficult to pair with other wines, with our wine it goes very, very well. As we used to say in Portugal, it is an ‘all roads wine’, it goes everywhere.
Now, about farming practices. Are they ‘green’, as we say here in America? What kinds of herbicides or pesticides are used, if any?
AGP The great majority of producers practice organic viticulture. Some are certified while others could be certified if they applied. We work with the rich equilibrium in Nature so we don’t need to use strong agro-toxics. We are small estates mixed with other varieties of agriculture. A patch with various vegetables along with the promotion of regional biodiversity is there among the vines. For diseases or plagues, biodiversity is the best way to end that kind of problem; to have a mixture of plant life is best, and we have that naturally. So we don’t need to use agro-toxics. This is true of the big majority of our farmers. They could be certified organic if they sought it.
Just growing one product is not a good idea. We would lose the natural cleverness of ecosystems, and then we would have to do things that should not be allowed. We have to be in sympathy with Nature. We then don’t have to overcome what Nature is telling us to do. It is working with Nature, not against it. Having and encouraging diversity is fundamental.
I couldn’t agree with you more. How about a few words about Quinta do Montalto?
AGP Quinta do Montalto is a small family estate. At the present time, I am the 5th generation to be producing wine over there. We became organic producers in 1997. We don’t do just wines. We organically farm vegetables: potatoes, onions, carrots, everything. We do sun dried tomatoes and make jams. We use everything from the farm. As far as wines, we do normal reds and whites. But after talking with the family we have decided to invest a lot in Medieval wine. All of my ancestors did it that way. We never stopped doing that wine. I have an uncle who used to make the wine before me. He always did that wine for his family. So we knew how to do it. In fact, we are planting more vineyards to make that wine. We believe that this is the only way to survive in the wine world and wine industry. We are playing a major role in this process.
I am also the president of VITIOURÉM, and as so when we see positive things happening, when more and more winegrowers want to go back in time and return to practices they have always known, that is very, very rewarding, to me and to the families. I want to continue to invest in Medieval wine. I strongly believe that this is the only way forward for the agricultural sector of that region to survive. The agriculture of Portugal has developed so rapidly in the last 10 to 15 years that right now its only agro-industrial. That is not a process that remembers history. If the small farmer does not prevail then in a few years we will no longer have farmers in our region. We will have only big supermarkets where we will buy products from China, Brazil, or even Argentina. At the present moment it is a crazy world. It is a crazy world.
Thank you, André.
AGP Thank you, Ken. We look forward to the filming.
Admin
I have never been moved to write about lodgings. More comfortable in a Motel 6 than a Ritz-Carlton, I prefer the first because I find the immediacy of the staff, the freely given personal stories of their labor and daily working conditions, to be the royal road to understanding any community I happen to be visiting. The history of a region or town is best expressed by the locals. In more expensive lodgings, the word often comes down from on high for all employees to continually project the image carefully cultivated and repeated on glossy brochures.
But in Portugal I discovered a new and frank interlocutor: the hotels themselves. On my recently completed documentary location scout of historical wine regions in Portugal, I was introduced to the Pousadas de Portugal, a very unique network of renovated architectural and cultural treasures that had fallen into disrepair and would have eventually deteriorated into irretrievable ruin. Portugal, as the reader may know, is in difficult financial straits. While international attention, easily distracted, turns to noisier foci of economic troubles, Portugal has been struggling internally for years with budget shortfalls and unemployment. So it is with great admiration that I report the continuing success of the Pousada system.
Scattered the length of the country, the Pousadas offer the traveler a direct experience of Portugal’s many historical threads. Rebuilt from within the walls of castles, monasteries, convents, and even hospitals, here it is the walls themselves that speak. And this being Portugal, it is not surprising that what they say is frequently melancholic and full of longing. Take, for example, the Pousada de Santa Marinha in Guimarães to the north. Originally the twelfth-century Convent of Agostinhos, it sits high above the city. Down long contoured hallways, I came to a beautifully tiled balcony and a fountain. With vistas to the mountains and the bustle of commerce below, I could easily sense a simultaneous spiritual command a vista often provides with that of the profound isolation the convent was meant to insure. Indeed, in my room, a former nun’s cell, there was a small bench built beneath a heavily built double window which opened onto a beautiful park. What might generations of nuns thought at this very spot?
We also stayed at the newly opened Pousada de Viseu in Viseu, a hyper-modern re-visioning of the former São Teotónio Hospital. A strikingly renovated property originally built in 1842, this was an altogether different historical experience. From its open floor plan with grand unobstructed sight lines to the warm wood paneling and balconies found in each room, this pousada is a small miracle of the of the architect’s (Gonçalo Byrne’s) imagination. It plays upon the themes of medicine’s need for a patient’s visibility and the restorative power of vistas for those same patients. (While the convents used vistas to reveal a world spiritually renounced, this hospital uses the same to encourage the infirm to health so that they might return.) Many features of its former incarnation remain, among them fragments of the pharmacy and the extraordinary symbolic high-ceiling carvings found in many spaces on the ground floor. I was to learn from one of my companions that a relative of his once sought health here. The Pousada de Viseu is repurposing at its most brilliant.
Last but not least was the Pousada de D. João IV located in Vila Viçosa, in the Alentajo. This hotel is set in another convent, the Convent of Chagas de Cristo. Like the Pousada de Santa Marinha, it too works with the pre-existing architectural themes of individual contemplation, isolation, and communal spaces. Here the rooms vary greatly in size and orientation according to a ecclesiastical logic I still do not fully comprehend. What I well remember was the internal courtyard, the orange trees bursting with birdsong as sunlight touched them. Just behind me were smaller chambers between archways, each with preserved paintings depicting moments of piety and spiritual struggle.
Let me add that the prices throughout the Pousadas de Portugal network are very competitive. Internet is available for a small fee. If you want something quite unique in a hotel experience, give them a look.
Admin
—–All photos are from the Pousadas de Portugal website.
The volcanic islands of Graciosa, Pico, and Terceira, specifically the parish of Biscoitos, are the demarcated wine regions of the Azores, a Portuguese archipelago just over 900 miles from the mainland. Legally recognized in 1994, each area has, nevertheless, been producing wine for hundreds of years. The vines are grown in the near complete absence of soil and sheltered from the wind and salt water by walls of broken basalt painstakingly built over the centuries. The ’soils’, slowly in the process of creation (globally, depending upon a series of site-specific geo-physical processes, the generation of an inch of soil requires many thousands of years), may be broadly divided into two types: shattered, heavily fissured basalt and a slightly looser, sandy version, its additional material largely water runoff and wind transported. This is most strikingly revealed on Pico where the vineyards come within yards of the open Atlantic. Coaxing vines into healthy production in either matrix is nothing short of miraculous.
I will have much to say on another occasion about all of the above. For now I want only to touch on the narrow dimension of Biscoitos’ private bottle label art, this after a few preliminaries.
The agricultural center of Terceira, this small town is home to S.D.A.T., the Adega do Servico de Desenvolvimento Agrario de Terceira (the cellar of Agrarian Development Service), the wine-making cooperative where, upon deplaning at Lajes Airport, we were taken by winery representative, António Espínola.
Producing over 40,000 liters of wine per annum off of 60 hectares, the local economy of Biscoitos, the wine sector, took a severe hit in the aftermath of the terrorist attack of 9/11. All the islands did. With new international airline regulations banning all liquid containers with volumes in excess of 4 oz. from being carried onto airplanes, the many thousands of tourists visiting Terceira each year went from purchasing multiple bottles of wine to buying just one now secured in checked baggage. Wine sales plummeted 50% throughout the archipelago and the sector has still not recovered. And it has absolutely nothing to do with the wines’ price points, as our soulless business language puts it. Indeed, given the extraordinary labor required to work with all the elements of the archipelago’s harsh terroir, it is stunning to see any Azores wine sold locally for as little as €10. With sinew and muscle, the farmer’s near indestructible will to go on restores to respectability the idea of hand-crafted, a notion rather limply exploited in American wine marketing, for example. Further, the oft-repeated promotional concept of how inexpensive are Portugal’s wines in general, fails miserably to grasp that it is rather a question of a sustainable price. No better example of this critical distinction may be found than on the Azores.
It has become more urgent than ever, especially in light of reduced tourist numbers in these sour economic times, to find a way to lessen the great downward pricing pressure and get the many fascinating wines of the Azores into the international market at a fair, sustainable price.
Like all the demarcated regions of the Azores, grape growing on Biscoitos is suffering from a generational shift. No longer willing to struggle for a living in the same way as their parents and grandparents have, the young are increasingly drawn to cities. To be sure, it is a pattern repeated in all agricultural sectors throughout the world. But in the Azores it is painfully evident, the abandoned vineyards immediately visible as overrun thatches of tangled flora. The disruption of traditional family practice is a very real threat to the long-term survival of this viticulture unique in all the world.
While at the cooperative, we were given precious insight into Biscoitos’ recent vinous history. Located within an older portion of the adega, António showed us what qualifies as their ‘wine library, a wall of honeycombed masonry (situated at the right in the photo). From the rough, abrasive chambers, an echo of the vineyards’ basaltic walls just outside, he pulled bottle after intriguing bottle of private wines, some made before the existence of the cooperative. As a tribute to the farmers and vintners of these mysterious verdelhos, the dominant white grape throughout the Azores, I will close this post with their simple, mute images.
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Admin
It rarely happens in life that one enjoys a perfect day, a day of balance, when both the intellect and body are equally engaged, happiness and sadness, noise and silence in equilibrium; when one is free to reflect on past and present; a day one briefly glimpses what it might mean to be immortal; when one’s body is lightly transported between ancient and thoroughly modern frames of mind, all bracketed by a sun that rises and sets over a green world. Such was my first day in the Dåo, a wine region in the north-central of Portugal.
From a stay at the Pousada in Ourém, we three lucid dreamers, the brilliant Virgilio Loureiro, cinematographer Nuno Sá Pessoa Sequeira and yours truly, set out to visit the varied typologies of rock presses in Parada de Gonta, Prazias, Paraduço and Vale do Salqueiro (among others), some used until the 1950s. I shall save those extraordinary visions, there is no other word, for another post.
On this occasion I mean to parse the day into discreet, manageable episodes. The first shall be the lunch and wine tasting enjoyed at the solid tourist destination, Paço dos Cunhas de Santar, just outside of Viseu. From Casa de Santar’s Alminhas (little souls) vineyard, the site of the Vale do Salgueiro rock press, a portion of which had been broken to provide a foundation stone for a recent outbuilding, we drove to the estate, our group including our guide, Alberto Sampaio, winemakers Carlos Silva and Mario Rui Ferreira (a very interesting and energetic individual), among others.
Leaving recent political history aside, the provided literature describes Paço dos Cunhas de Santar like this:
Paço de Santar was built by order of D. Pedro da Cunha in 1609. A large ancient farmhouse has stood on this site for hundreds of years. It’s sole purpose was to produce olive oil, fruits and wine for the grand and prestigious Oporto markets. Today, Paço de Santar has 32 hectares of traditional Dão varieties and 5 z (sic) of olive trees.
It was opened to wine tourism in 2008. And its restaurant, open everyday, provided us a spectacular meal. Indeed, our elegant host, son of the Comte de Santar, winemaker Pedro Vasconcelos e Sousa, sat us down to the following menu.
To Start
Bread Toast of Mushrooms, Emulsion of Tomatoes and Cardamon
Main Course
Codfish in Maize Bread, Potatoes and “Migas da Beira”
Second Course
Roasted Goat, Rice of Mushrooms and Spinaches
Dessert
Cheese Serra da Estrela, “Requeijão” and Sweet Pumpkin
—–
During this beautiful repast we tasted and discussed many of the wines of the Dão. Below is the list, largely in the order sipped, and my brief thoughts, if warranted, about each.
2008 Cabriz Bruto, Quinta de Cabriz, a blend of Malvasia Fino and Cercial. Refreshing and light. My understanding is that this sparkler makes up 10% of their sales.
2008 Comdessa, Casa de Santar, 14% alc. This white wine had a full mouthfeel, a little heat, lightly acidic; its all new French oak was reserved. Almost a Viognier character.
2008 Paço dos Cunhas de Santar ‘Nature’. A ‘biologique’ wine -moving toward Biodynamic certification- it had soft, rounded tannins. Vanished in the back palate; a light oak influence.
2007 UDACA (União das Adegas Cooperativa da Região Demarcada do Dão) Touriga Nacional, 13% alc. Twelve months aging in mixed oak barrels. Light, fragrant bouquet, simple body, sweet, smoky, but short finish.
2007 Vinha Paz Reserva (Antonio Canto Moniz), Touriga Nacional; American and French oak. Sweet, full body, masive mid-palate, round tannins, very long finish- oak present.
2007 Quinta da Falorca, T-nac, Touriga Nacional, 14% alc. Gorgeous nose, full body, beautifully structured; no oak. Brilliant expression of Touriga. A truly world-class effort. (As a side note, after I had made my feelings about the wine known, I was approached by folks associated with the parent quinta. They explained that a certain Mark Squires, Robert Parker’s hit man inexplicably assigned to Portugal, gave T-nac an ‘89′. As silly as that is in itself, Mr. Squires also recommended that they grub up all their Touriga Nacional and replant with Cabernet Sauvignon. Truly terrible advice, a disservice to the grape and to the Dão patrimony.)
2003 Quinta das Roques. 13.5%. Touriga Nacional. Just a baby. Needs time. Very well structured.
2004 Quinta de Cabriz (Dão Sul), Escolha. 14% alc.
2004 Quinta da Falorca, Garrefeira, Old Vines 14.5% alc, Touriga Nacional, Alfrocheiro Preto and Tinta Roriz. Full mouthfeel, very firm tannins, rich mid-palate. Oak present, a little unbalanced, hot on the finish. Thoughtful wine.
Also served was the 2003 Quinta das Roques Reserve Blend. From the Pessegueiro (peach) vineyard. 13.5% alc. A seamless wine. From mid-palate to finish, a beautiful elaboration. Quite elegant.
2004 Conde, Casa de Santar 14% alc. Very elegant, balanced. Holds the alcohol well, rounded tannins. Good quality, if not particularly memorable.
1994 UDACA 12.5% alc. Touriga Nacional and other, unspecified grape varieties. Extremely satisfying. Very deep, rich and mysterious. I will be fortunate to taste this wine again someday.
I should also mention a 2009 Quinta da Falorca, Rosé of Touriga Nacional (not pictured). 13.5% alc. A little candified, but with good acid. I am especially fond of Tavel rosés. I have had quite a few. So, my palate would need to taste many more Portuguese examples of rosé before I could even hazard an opinion as to the quality. I will say that I did not find Quinta da Falorca’s effort compelling, mindful of the caveat above.
Lastly, we tried to enjoy a magnum of 1970 Dão Garrafeira out of Viseu. Produced by the Federacão dos Viticultores por Dão with the greatest hopes, sadly the wine was quite medicinal. Its day has passed.
We finished the lunch in very good spirits. Thanking our gracious host, we departed light-headed, with much work still remaining this day, about which more later. Resting with the setting sun, we would find our way to the restored 17th century Pousada Santa Marinha in Guimarães.
Update It has come to my attention that a couple of the wines mentioned above also made the reputable Sarah Ahmed’s list of Top 50 Wines of Portugal.
Admin
It has been a very busy time for the Reign of Terroir. Your intrepid admin has just returned from a very successful adventure in Portugal. And like the deep well on Pico Island pictured, I have much to offer. Primed with a 1001 tales of that extraordinary wine-producing country, from the Alentejo to the Azores, I shall soon begin the very pleasant work of recounting as many as I am able.
Not meaning to shirk my domestic responsibilities, I also have planned a series of stories about wine events in both California and Washington State. And I will post a number of interesting pieces from the environmental and technological fronts.
Below, in no particular order, is a partial list of work to come.
— Portugal
I shall return to the subject of Colares with insight into the life’s work of Paulo da Silva of the Adega Beira-mar and a look into the Adega Viuva Gomes, an impressive stop along the Bucelas, Carcavelos and Colares winer route.
Off to the Alentejo, I will take readers to the Sõa Cucufate ruins, one of the largest Roman villae in Iberia. It is but a short drive to Vila Alva and Vila de Frades, both centers of clay jar wine production, a technology of great antiquity. Also recounted will be a visit to adegas in Amareleja, also clay jar wine producers.
Next up will be a look at the ‘urban vineyards’ of Fazendas de Almeirim while on the way to Ourém and a tour of the Espite Valley with the gifted Andre Gomes Pereira, president of Vitiourém, an organization deeply dedicated to the preservation of the local wine culture.
Then it will be the startling rock presses of the Dão region which will be described. Used until the 1950s, I will attempt an explanation of their practical application. So too will I relate a brilliant wine tasting at Paço dos Cunhas de Santar where more than a dozen wines were offered over the course of a leisurely lunch of traditional foods beautifully prepared.
Have you been to the Etrurian-style vineyards of the Vinho Verde, Bastos and Amarante regions? I will try to explain why you simply must make it a travel destination. The region’s brilliant mastery of vertical space and its associated biodiversity, with vines over 12 feet high, deserves to be much more widely known.
How can so tormented a landscape, so harsh an environment, for people and vines, give rise to one of the most amazing wine cultures in all the world? The Azores is an archipelago of extreme contrasts, as are its vineyards, at once seemingly impossible yet very productive. How to get such profoundly unique wines into the markets of Europe and America? I will show, among other places, the Biscoitos Cooperative on Terceira Island, and on Pico Island I will explore the thriving Cooperativa Vitivinicola and other cultural treasures situated beneath the active Pico volcano.
—California and Washington
This Friday I will be attending a PS I Love You event, their celebrated Dark and Delicious.
And generously sent to me from L’Ecole No. 41 out of the Walla Walla Valley, Washington, there will appear my take on some of their wines.
These are but a few of the pieces begging to be written. Many more will follow in the fullness of time.
To work!
Admin
Presented here is a detailed look into a historic winery, the Adega Regional de Colares outside of Lisbon, Portugal. It is also the conclusion of my thorough interview with Colares enologist, Francisco Figueiredo. He was very generous with his time, spending more than two hours indulging my curiosity. I would encourage readers to, well, read the first two installments: The Vineyards of Colares, A National Patrimony At Risk and From The Vineyards To The Adega Regional de Colares. It is a strange twist of fate that well after thinking I should not soon pass this way again, in two days I shall in fact be returning to Portugal for more wine work. More details to come.
Admin You were bottling the other day? This is your machine?
Francisco Figueiredo Yes. It is a little messy in here because we just got forty pallets of bottles. We were bottling some of the red 2004 Colares. And this is our bottling machine.
I’ve seen these guys before. Is this Italian?
FF Yes. Many are. So are the crushers and de-stemmers. The press is French. We have, more or less, modern machines. We still have some work to do. We have some walls to paint. We laid down a new floor about two years ago. We have to go slow with the investments. We will repair the roof and the walls soon, I hope.
These are the old lagares where the grapes used to be crushed and pressed. And part of the reds were fermented here. We don’t use the lagares anymore.
Does anyone still use lagares?
FF Yes. In the Douro Valley there are places where they still use them. And some of our own growers, they also do their own wine at home, they use them… Here are the old cement vats, fermenters also. We don’t use them anymore, either. And here is an old centrifugal crusher. And our new one. We use a pneumatic press for our wines. We also have two hydraulic vertical presses over there which we can use if we have a problem with the pneumatic press. And we have a machine to fill the ‘bag-in-box’. We use that type of package for our table wines. They are the boxes with the small tap. We use vacuum filling. The wine stays good for quite some time. And that is now our substitute for the glass jug. We are getting good sales from using the bag-in-box system.
So we ferment in temperature controlled stainless steel. Some of the red, because we don’t have enough room in the stainless steel, we still use those big wood vats over there. We call them ânforas; we still use them for some of the table wine. Of course, we have no temperature control with them. An interesting fact about those is that, as you know, for our steel vats we have to use the pump to circulate the juice, from the bottom to the top, to pump over to get the color out. But in the wooden ânfora, the process is done naturally because the carbonic gas pressure that builds inside is enough to push the wine to the top; and it fills that cup on the top so that the pomace always stays beneath the wine. We can do this without the use of pumps or electricity, just the carbonic gas pressure which build up naturally during fermentation. I have not seen these anywhere else in the world. The system is the same for the cement vats called ânfora Argelina, but I have never seen wooden ones.
Where did these come from?
FF They were built here. The wood is Portuguese Chestnut. Each takes ten tons of grapes. And later we then bring over the pneumatic pump and open a small door to take the pomace to the press. This has a tube inside. The cup on top has a hole, in the center, so the wine goes up, fills the cup, and the wine then drains back on top of the pomace.
It’s like a giant coffee percolator!
FF (laughs) Yes. Almost exactly like a coffee percolator. This is the same system as the traditional cement that appeared in the ’60s.
May I climb up?
FF Yes. As long as you are not afraid of heights!
We climb up a narrow ladder.
FF You can see the tube. This is really spectacular to see during fermentation because the cup is filled with wine and it bubbles! It is a pretty sight.
The doors are very small. How do you clean out the interior?
FF We go inside. Someone has to go inside to remove all of the pomace. We put a ventilator up here and let the vat breathe for some time because of the danger of suffocation. In fact, four people have died in Portugal during this harvest time because of carbonic gas. They die without knowing it. We are very careful about that. For cleaning we have a special device that sprays hot water. But it is very difficult to be 100% sure that it is perfectly clean. It is wood, after all.
But we don’t have a problem with Brettanomyces because our wine has a low pH. And we don’t have a lot of sugar in the wine. We produce dry wines, around 12% alcohol. All the sugar is consumed by the yeast. So it is not easy for Brett. The main problem for us is not having temperature control here; not the wood but the temperature control. The wine can heat up quite a bit, around 40 degrees celsius.
Really?
FF Yes. That is high enough for the wine to lose a lot of the aroma. The tube, by the way, is connected to the crusher so that the grapes come through here. We use two or three of these vats or ânfora, each year.
Whose initials are these, JVN? The maker?
FF That means Junta Nacional do Vinhos, the National Wine Institute [founded in 1937]. Since the fifties, until 1994, this cooperative was a kind of hybrid organism; it was half cooperative, half was intervention by the state, the agricultural minister. Because of that all of the wine had to be made here in order to use the Colares DOC. That is no longer the case.
And what are these tools?
FF We don’t use them any longer, but they are for pushing down the cap. They were used if we didn’t put in a full 10 tons of grapes inside the ânfora. With less grapes inside, the carbonic gas would not be enough to push the wine out of the top. These forks would be used to push the pomace, the cap, down to mix with the wine. We now use a pump for that if it becomes a problem.
These are beautiful. I trust they will eventually end up in a museum.
FF Yes, yes. Some of them already are. And they are not permitted for use these days. They are made of wood and iron. What was done at the time was to paint, to use special paints to protect the iron parts in the tools and machines. Now it is all stainless steel. But every year all of the old tools had to be painted with the special paint that protected the iron from contact with the wine.
We climb down the stairs.
So, to be clear, someone has to climb into the anfora from the top…
FF Yes, yes. You go up to the cup and climb in from there using a ladder. The center tube is pulled out and someone goes down.
Do you ever have any cork issues?
FF No. We use only corks. I have never received cork taint complaint. Never. I will always choose cork.
I agree with you completely.
FF Would you like to taste some of the wines?
Of course! You know, I have a odd thing to ask. Being from America, we like to collect hats or shirts of the places we’ve visited. I’m looking for something with the name ‘Colares’ on it. Do you know where I can find such a thing? A rather silly idea!
FF No. But it is not a silly idea. It is an idea I have given to the directors. Why not a polo shirt or something? Even for the workers!
Not to mention Gonçalo, the winegrower we spoke with earlier. He wasn’t even wearing a hat!
Francisco laughs while getting two tasting glasses.
It must be very satisfying work for you. You’re doing so many things at the same time; preserving a way of life, preserving a wine culture, preserving memory…
FF Yes. It is all very important. I am also afraid that things might not go well in the future. The vines are in danger. That’s the only thing that I regret.
He uses a thief to draw a barrel sample. This is the white Malvasia, sandy soil, 2008. We will bottle it probably in a couple of weeks. [Late November.] Malvasia has a very citric, very minerally, acidic taste, and an almost salty taste, I notice. It also has an oxidative character; I think of hay or honey.
Very oceanic… very bright and fresh. How is the water quality here?
FF We analyze it inside our HACCP plant: ‘Hazard Analyses and Critical Control Points’. (laughs) There is some paperwork that we have to do. We have to analyze the water. It is good.
That’s one helluva name. So when you’re doing bottling session how many people would normally be here?
FF Working? Around four. We do it with a small crew to get into the rhythm. We can do about 1000 to 1200 bottles an hour. That is a good speed for a machine like ours. One guy puts the bottle on the carousal, another one taking it off and putting in the cork, another one carrying the bottles, another stacking the bottles. It would be quicker if we had one of those pallet movers, but we don’t have one yet.
Do you use wild yeasts?
FF No. We inoculate. The reason is that I had some experiences making the wine with natural yeasts, the wild yeasts, but I had some problems with starting the fermentation. It is too risky for me to risk that when I do 7000 liters of Ramisco or 2500 liters of Malvasia. But I did make an experiment. It is a question of trying to select a natural yeast from the area; that would be a project that I would like to do.
So you have experimented…
FF Yes, with several yeasts. For the whites we use a Portuguese yeast; it was selected in the Vinho Verde region, in the north of Portugal.
How was it done historically?
FF Naturally. But the big difference is that it would have been in an open lagar. That makes a lot of difference from using the closed stainless steel vats. I have made wine at my parents home using, not a granite lagar, but a small plastic lagar, more or less; and I had no problem starting the fermentation. Sometimes we have a problem with it stopping!
It can stop at 12% ?
FF Yes, before the sugar is depleted. That is a risk for the wine. But the main problem is fermentation within a closed tank. That’s when it becomes difficult. We would probably have no problem if I did the Ramisco in the lagar.
Francisco draws a second wine.
Have there ever been experiments done with fortified wines in Colares?
FF No. Just for the workers. I have done one this year. (laughs) We call it jeropiga or Abafado. I have taken the juice out of the tank before fermentation started and added our wine distillate. I made five liters last year. We give a small bottle for each of the workers. It is for drinking now. We have a tradition of drinking it during Saint Martin’s Day, the 11th of November. That day it is traditional to release the young wine for the first time; and you also drink abafado. An abafado is when the fermentation has started a little bit, like a Port, it is the same. Port is a special type of abafado. We add the spirits before the fermentation has started. One is usually a little bit sweeter than the other.
He pours the second wine.
FF This is the Ramisco. This has been in the big wood vats for around two years. Then it was put into these oak barrels. This is not young oak. It is three year-old oak. Our Ramisco wine doesn’t go well with new oak. It is too strong for our wine. So we use a two to three year-old barrel. What we are doing now is three years in the big exotic barrels in the other room [another part of the adega] and one year in the small oak barrels. We now see that this is the best for the wine.
How warm does it get in the other room?
FF This room is much hotter than the other. Even during the summertime the other room only gets to 16, maybe 20 degrees celsius. Here, no.
We drink the Ramisco. This Ramisco is regional because it has not yet been certified. It becomes DOC only after certification. Before that it is regional. Six months before bottling we have to send the wine to a certification board and they will certify the wine as DOC.
What does certification involve? And who is on the panel?
FF It involves a chemical analysis and a tasting. The panel is made up of one representative of the city, there are the persons who represent the associations and cooperatives of the Estremadura region, and then there are representatives of the producers. The panel or board has about 15 people.
What wine do you use for topping off?
FF We use the same wine held in a different vat. We can mix a maximum of 10% of different years of Ramisco. If we have the need we can do that, to play with the volumes. When you use new oak, and I’ve this experience in other places, you often have to use 15%. The Australians usually don’t top. They put the barrel on its side and leave it there for a only a few months. They probably do that in California as well.
Just out of curiosity, what do you think of wine ratings, and wine descriptions, the tasting notes?
FF They are very exaggerated. Wine is simpler than that. I think that is the beauty of wine. Sometimes a wine smell like something, but the critics exaggerate. Sometimes the wine smells like something tangible, but….
We exit the adega and make our way to his car where I retrieve my personal effects.
What do you have here in the back of your car?
FF My mother-in-law sent this to my mother. It is a basket of walnuts and some chestnuts, and a bottle of jeropiga! (laughs) It is my mother-in-law’s present to my mother.
Thank you very much, Francisco. This has been an eye-opening visit.
FF It was a pleasure, Ken. Let me give you some wine before you go.
Does the adega keep a wine library?
FF Yes. Since 1931, the first harvest in the year of the foundation of the cooperative; the first wine we made.
Back to 1931? My goodness. So what is next for you, your next series of tasks?
FF We will bottle a few things. We always have a busy commercial time at Christmas. After that, in January, we usually transfer the young wines to the wood vats, take the lees out. Then we continue to bottle if we have the need. And I start in the springtime I get out of the cellar to give technical support to the vineyards. And then the cycle begins again!
Admin
When in Lisbon, Portugal for the European Wine Bloggers Conference, I had the good fortune to be taken on a detailed tour of a few Colares DOC vineyards by Francisco Figueiredo, enologist for the Adega Regional de Colares cooperative. This rewarding encounted I chronicled in The Vineyards of Colares, A National Patrimony At Risk. I must stress that little of what follows here will be fully appreciated without first having read this part. For now comes a part 2, a continuation of our conversation, but with the accent on the field research the cooperative is doing with clones and trellising.
Colares sits is along the Atlantic Coast, in the western Estremadura, a region surrounding Lisbon. A simple and inexpensive train ride north from Lisbon takes the visitor to Sintra. From there a bus on regular rounds, wends its way to Colares proper. As recounted in part 1, its wines are particularly interesting, first because of the grapes permitted by the DOC, Ramisco, Malvasia and Molar (Negre Mole); secondly, because the Ramisco grape has been historically grown in sand, the vines never required grafting during the phylloxera plague of the 19th century. They remain quite rare in all of Europe.
And so I resume the conversation. With the wind howling, I ask…
Admin Is this a fairly steady wind?!
Francisco Figueiredo (laughs) Yes, yes!
When I came into Colares the other day it was completely still. But we are on the other side of the hills….
FF This is the place I was talking about. We are here making the clonal selection. This is planted with several cuttings from the area. We have here the three main varieties we use here: Ramisco, Malvasia, the white, and also we have a traditional red variety which is Molar. It is known by Negra Mole in Madeira where they also use it for their wines. This is trellised to help us study. It helps us watch the canes and more easily see the harvest.
This is a fairly large vineyard. Was this always a vineyard?
FF This was always a vineyard. If you ask me how the wine is we make from this vineyard I will tell you that it is different from the wine made in the other vineyards we’ve seen. The maturation period is quite different here. Here we have early maturation on that type of vineyard, the ones low on the ground, than we have here with the trellis. It can make a big difference in terms of wine quality because of the weather. That can be a big problem, especially the rain. So what we see, mainly in the white varieties, is that we have early maturation on the traditional vineyard instead of the trellised vineyard.
What are the bunches like on the Ramisco?
FF They are very small. Do you know Pinot Noir? They are more or less like that. Small, open clusters, with small grapes, a lot like Pinot Noir. Ramisco has very large seeds in relation to the skin and pulp of the grape. That’s one of the reasons why the Ramisco wine has a lot of tannins. We have to soften them in the wood barrels before we can bottle it and put it on sale. This region does not produce very high alcohol wines because of the climactic conditions. They tend to be 11 to 11.5 percent alcohol; a maximum 12 to 12.5 percent alcohol in the white wine. And it also has some natural acidity; so the wine improves a lot with this four-year aging in the barrel, and after that in the bottle.
Yes. I’ve had maybe eight different vintages from a couple of different producers since I’ve arrived. I’ve been doing lots of research!
FF Do you like the wine or is it a difficult wine?
Yes! I love the wines.
FF I ask because the usual consumer likes high alcohol wines with very sweet flavors. Colares is very different from that! It is a very good wine for food.
So are Colares wines sold principally in Lisbon?
FF Yes. Mainly in Sintra, in Lisbon and the Sintra area. We make a very large amount of the sales directly from the adega regional, from the cellar in Colares itself. Colares is a small production. We make around 5,000 to 7,000, to 10,000 liters a year. So it is a very small production. The clay soil wines have higher yields, a higher production. Those types of wines we tend to distribute more widely. But the Colares wine is mainly sold in the Sintra and in some wine shops in Lisbon. But not in the big supermarkets.
Now, I notice that all the vineyards we’ve seen are on the top of the hills or dunes. Are there some that grow on the slopes? [Back in the car, we drive east to another vineyard.]
FF A little. But the ocean is very near. Maybe 200 meters away. Different from the traditional vineyard, here we are looking at mechanizing harvesting along the rows, between the rows. So here we have a low trellis. This way we can still keep the leaves and the bunches near to the ground. Here it is a divided canopy to allow the wind to pass through so as to give us a little bit more protection against powdery mildew. The higher the vine the more protection is needed. These are very old vines. This vineyard is of the adega’s director. He is also an agronomist.
And you own a vineyard.
FF My parents have planted a vineyard, in 2007. But unfortunately it is not on the sandy soil. My parents’ land is on clay! (laughs) I’ve not put in Ramisco. But I have planted Molar because it is better adapted than Ramisco which does not mature well on the clay. It needs the sand, the hot sand. So I have planted Molar, which is also a variety from here. But it’s not Ramisco. It’s not DOC. It would be nice to have a piece of sandy soil… but nevertheless I have planted a vineyard. It’s my home.
How did you become associated with the Adega Regional de Colares?
FF I have known the director for a while. When I was studying and doing my thesis, he was doing his final thesis, his PhD. And we were using the same vine for collecting data for our own work. I knew him there, and then he invited me to work here on the 1999 harvest. So I came to Colares for a one month job during the harvest, in the adega itself. I came back in 2000 and again in 2001. He then invited me to work in the cooperative. And in 2006-2007 I assumed enology position in the wine production. I was working with the wine but before we had an ‘external’ enologist. From 2007 on I assumed that part of the job.
During the height of the tourist season, how many tourists come here? Are the roads busy?
FF Yes. During summertime it is a busy, busy time. As for the adega and vineyards, there are some companies who organize wine tours and trekking around this area. They also show the vineyards to the visitors. We also organize tastings. The adega gets a lot of tourists. We put on tastings all year round. Between tastings, wedding and dinner parties, we probably have around 12,000 people pass through the cellar. If some groups require a more technical tour then they call me and I will do that.
Do enologists and wine experts from around the world come here as well?
FF Yes, yes. I’ve received guests from Australia, from France… we have received a of of people who work in the field. And some wine blogs have made reference to Colares I can recall.
[We drive along the coast, past very large new homes.]
So these large houses are mostly second homes?
FF Mostly, yes.
Was there a building project that was an especially big battle over a vineyard?
FF No. It’s just chipped away little by little.
What other DOCs in the Estremadura are under threat from development?
FF Carcavelos and Colares are the two. They are also small. They are nearest Lisbon. And Bucelas, which a region demarcated only for white wine. They produce white wine from the Arinto variety. So they are a little bit threatened. But the remaining areas of the Estremadura are not threatened.
But one of the bigger threats must be the importation of foreign varieties, like Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah.
FF That is now happening in the Estremadura. You have a lot of varieties getting in, mainly Syrah with a little bit of Cabernet Sauvignon. And the Portuguese varieties are being used less. People are probably now using only Touriga Nacional, which is good, and Tinta Roriz which is the Spanish Tempranillo. We see a lot of Syrah, a lot of Cabernet, Alicante Bouschet… and so our traditional varieties are being used less with the exception of Touriga Nacional and Tinta Roriz (which is not Portuguese, but it almost since it has been grown here for many, many years in the Douro and in the Alentejo.) But if a different grape is grown here in Colares, you can call it a regional wine, but the name ‘Colares’ cannot appear on the label.
Founded in 1931, the purpose of the cooperative was to produce all of the Colares wine as a legal protection, a guarantee of quality. And then the cooperative sells the wine to different storage companies, with different aging techniques, for example, their own barreling, their own blending, all under their own label. Back then the Colares cooperative didn’t even bottle their own wine. They sold the wine to different brands. Colares Chitas, for example, was one of them, and still is, one of the two remaining.
Now, however, since 1994, if a person came from outside and wanted to produce Colares, if that person respected the DOC law, they could do it all themselves, even the vinification. So there are now two labels and two producers who do the vinification, including the Adega Regional de Colares.
End of part 2
Read part 1 here.
The next and last installment will be a tour of the adega itself.
Admin
How does one approach a wine largely made with a Roman technology hundreds of years old? How does one square the modern palate, though habituated to a broad range of flavors, but nevertheless structurally incapable of thinking such a wine on its own terms? How does one taste what is ancient without a historical memory? These are more than academic questions. Imagine a time traveler from contemporary Mexico City conversing with Cervantes. Or an American Christian fundamentalist suddenly in the presence of Giordano Bruno. In a similar manner, one may say what a wine tastes like, but one cannot easily enter into a productive cultural dialogue with an ‘ancient’ wine, one pioneered by monks, certainly not with one like the Vila de Frades clay jar wine sitting in front of me. How does one properly taste ‘the blood of Christ’?
Like many aspects of Portuguese wine culture, and, frankly, of the culture of Portugal itself, there is very much for this writer to learn. Yet this equally holds true for American wine enthusiasts generally. Since my November return to the states from the European Wine Bloggers Conference held in Lisbon, I can honestly say I have not had a single constructive conversation on the subject of Portuguese wines! The absence of knowledge has been a revelation. This must change. Portugal is an intellectual paradise for the restless mind. I encourage folks to visit and explore. And to drink widely.
Moving on. During the organization of the Alentejo Vinho Regional (VR) into DOCs and Indicação de Proveniencia Regulamentadas (IPR), the clay jar tradition, with Vila de Frades at its center, was somehow overlooked. A process has been underway for some time to provide the associated villages distinct government protections.
Vila de Frades, parish of the village of the friars, is located in the Alentejo, a few miles west of Vidigueira DOC and south of Evora IPR. The local economy is based upon the vine and olives, an agricultural economy maintained by many, many small landowners. Through attrition, the wearing out and accidental breaking of their distinguishing clay jars and the expenses associated with privatized winemaking, it happened that Vila de Frades became the region’s center of wine production. I will freely admit primary, local information is hard to come by, a condition I hope to partially remedy when I visit the region and villages this February. Perhaps the reader might, therefore, forgive me offering so few details! For now an interested reader may find something of value in an earlier piece I wrote a short time ago. Stay tuned to this space.
Of the wine itself, just what grapes are used to produce precisely this wine I cannot firmly say. I do know that at least these varieties are possible: Touriga National, Touriga Franca, Tinta Barroca, Rufete, and the white grape, Rubigato. (A search of Catavino’s deep archive would likely prove most rewarding.) The wine is a blend of red and white. Curiously, I have found contradictory information as to the percentages permitted. One site claims it is 85% white and 15% red maximum. Another source, lost in my browser ‘History’, claims the reverse, 85% red, 15% white. (I hope to clarify this detail in a few days.) In either case there is a law forbidding the blending of red and white wines. Just how this matter is locally dealt with I am not certain. But I believe it may come down to the antiquity of the blending practice. Yet another question to ask…
As may be seen in the picture above, the wine is quite a crystal clear pale red, almost pink, (though rosé would perhaps be most accurate were it not to give us the wrong idea). The nose is fruity, with strawberry and sweet cherry. A good sniff is difficult owning to the traditional plane drinking glass, also pictured above. I suspect this choice of glass has to do, in part, with how quickly the wine might oxidize in a larger vessel.
The wine is mildly acidic, very fruity, agreeable, with 13.5% alc., definitely detectable on the tongue. But all of this is completely irrelevant because the wine must be drunk with food! Indeed, the person from whom I received this jar and glass, Virgilio Loureiro, forcefully insisted in a private communication that there can be no proper tasting of this wine absent food. So it is that its historical character, its gustatory genealogy, makes of the modern gesture of tasting notes a perfect non-sense. This is a difficult notion to grasp in our age of the near-universal acceptance of evaluating wine in isolation, for example. And let us pass over in silence the stupidity of scores. But the question of how we moderns might think and come to appreciate such a wine on its own terms is, I believe, of broad interest to wine culture.
For what is the purpose of a horse now that we have engines? What is the purpose of love since soon we will soon have a pharmaceutical cure? A Kindle for books. And as for transubstantiation, now that we are rapidly refining the science of genetics, of what use is God?
Special thanks to Eduardo Segueira and Virgilio Loureiro for help with this fragment.
Admin
From December 4th-6th Vila de Frades (the village of Friars), a small community of 1000 souls, hosted Vitifrades, the festival of clay jar wines and olive oils. Begun in 1997, the Vitifrades Festival has been the principle showcase for this very rare tradition of winemaking. The Alentejo region of Portugal has seen a great many changes in wine production over the last 30 years. But what has changed little, what still clings heroically to life, in Vila de Frades, Vila Alva, Vidiguiera, and other local villages, is the dedication to a specific winemaking technology little changed since the time of the Romans. Winemaking in our time is obsessed with new technologies and is limited in its expression by narrowing differences foisted upon winemakers by marketing forces and the well-publicized palates of a very few. But who among we drinkers would not welcome the opportunity to visit Vila Frades and to taste the wines at such a festival? Indeed, it is a festival dedicated as much to clay jar wines (and olive oils) as to a local culture of resistance.
From a recent (vol 49, #4, 2009) Chronica Horticulturae article by Virgilio Loureiro titled ‘Historical Wines of Portugal’,
“Portuguese culture did not escape the ‘wave of progress’ that devastated the viticultural world in the end of the 20th century but contributed to affirm the wine as a global drink of prestige. Besides the Port, Madeira, and Mateus Rosé wines, which were already globalized, the Green wine, the Alentejo, the Douro, and the Dão reached international maturity. However, not everything has been positive. The powerful force of new technologies and the anxiety to produce more and lower-priced wine caused irreparable damages to regional originalities, the soul of world cuisine, especially in its millenarian grape and wine-growing patrimony. It is in this context that it has become urgent to speak about old European historical wines, so that one of the most important symbols of the Mediterranean World and Western civilization is to be understood as more than merchandise or business.”
And of clay jar wines specifically, he writes,
“White, red, or pale wines made in great clay jars, hence their name, have a long tradition in the Alentejo, the southern part of the country, and these wines continue to be made according to this Roman process. The special taste conferred makes it the preferred one to Alentejanos, who only drink another wine when jar wine ends. The jar manufacturers, that did not use the potter wheel, have disappeared, and the gateadores, who placed the patches (cats) in the jars, as well as the pesgadores, who waterproofed the interior of the jars with pitch, are almost gone. Among jar wines, the Palhetes of Vila de Frades assume particular relevance and are locally known as petroleiros. They are a variety of the jar wines that originated in the Saint Cucufate Convent. The friars, having used one of the largest Roman villae in Lusitania, now in ruins, created a petroleum color jar wine called palhete, made from a blend of about 80% white grapes and 20% red grapes.”
What follows is a series of photographs taken during this most recent Vitifrades Festival by Prof. Virgilio Loureiro. I post them here with his kind permission. Saludos!
A Jar Wine Cellar
Antonio Ferro (left) with Virgilio Louriero.
Participants.
A traditional wine bar.
Principle Pavillion.
Visiting another cellar.
People in the street.
Procession.
A wine cellar after the visit.
Admin
Cork versus screw cap. The conversation has gotten quite stale for the wine drinker. And that is because the terms of debate largely revolve around the issue of the preservation of wine alone. Nothing but the noise of competing industries on this topic may be regularly heard. A drinker may be forgiven for believing that it really doesn’t matter how wine is sealed. Has cork improved in recent years? Has the incidence of TCA contamination been dramatically reduced? Are there reduction issues associated with screw cap? And does cork matter? To all of these questions the answer is a resounding “yes”.
Robert Parker, recently returned from the WineFuture Conference in Spain observed on his website just this week that
“…the tiny percentage of corked bottles confirms what I have been seeing for the last 3-4 years…that industry has awakened following the decline in cork quality…”
Yet how does this information influence the drinker in their purchasing decisions? Perhaps not at all. Something is missing from the popular discussion. Indeed, much more than something is missing.
There exists a broad range of important issues that the cork manufacturer Amorim has taken the lead in publicizing. Cork is a renewable, entirely recyclable resource. Cork forests play an indispensable role in plant and animal ecosystems and sanctuaries, as reservoirs of biodiversity and even speciation. Family traditions remain intact and thrive through the careful husbandry of cork oak trees generations-old for a fair price. Local economies are sustained by its stable cultivation. Harvesting requires skills patiently acquired. And manufacturing offers productive employment to 1000s. These and still other positive social and environmental values are available for all to read on Amorim’s Cork Facts page, a rich source of current information on the state of the culture and industry.
Doing my part to celebrate this noble product, I offer an account of a tour of the the Quinta da Lagoalva, both the estate and winery. As a very fine part of the 2009 European Wine Bloggers Conference in Lisbon, Amorim and Lagoalva graciously offered an in-depth look at virtually every aspect of cork’s profound backstory. This is the substance of part 1. In part 2 I will recount a tour of the Amorim production facility in Coruche.
A word about our guide from Amorim, Carlos de Jesus, the Director of Marketing & Communications. Rarely have I met an individual with such a complete mastery of a subject. I knew we were in for educational experience when the first thing the gentleman said was “Ask any question you want. Make them as tough as you like. If you don’t ask the hard questions, I will. And I will answer them.” Carlos was no company flak, but a man deeply dedicated to the life and culture of cork in all its many dimensions. A truly brilliant fellow.
Enjoy.
Diogo Campilho I am the winemaker for Lagoalva. I studied in Portugal for four years, and then I went to Australia where I worked for three years until I came back to Lagoalva in 2004. Lagoalva belongs to my family. It is a family estate. We have in total 6000 acres; some of them are together and then we have smaller pieces around.
Of the cork trees, we have 3000 acres. We have harvested bark here since 1932, quite a long time. We harvest all the cork every nine years. In those years there are only two years in which we don’t take bark. Yields per year are around 50,000 arrobas (an arroba is about 15 kilos). We use the arroba because it is the unit of measurement here.
About 25% of our bark is top quality; 50% is normal to average; the last 25% is not so good [but still usable]. With respect to TCA, that occurs mostly at the bottom of the tree. We don’t sell that part. We cut it off, a certain number of centimeters is removed. The bark is then placed on top of plastic sheets [tarps] for a time.
We have here a guy who will show you how we harvest from the tree; from that tree which is on the ground. He will demonstrate. We sell the bark that only we harvest. Why? Because our workers have been with us for ages and they know how to do it well! And for us it is important that it is harvested properly so as to not damage the tree. We work carefully to preserve them for as long as we can.
The first time the bark is harvested is after 25 years. We call it ‘virgin’. We don’t sell it. It is not of good quality. The second harvest we don’t sell either. It is only after 18 years, with the third harvest, do we begin selling the bark.
Carlos de Jesus You can never harvest everything. There is no mathematical formula but it is a function of the height of the tree and of the diameter of the trunk. That gives you the amount of cork that may be removed. By the time these guys come back to this tree in 9 years the tree is going to be bigger. They are going to be able to take a little bit more. So every cycle, every nine years, a little bit more will be taken as the oak reaches its maturity. But you never harvest 100%. That would be too much stress on the tree.
See how rough the bark is? This afternoon when we go to Coruche [one of Amorim’s cork processing centers] you will be able to see the planks of the third, fourth, and fifth etc. harvest. And you will be able to see how much smoother the bark becomes over the life of the cork oak. Subsequent harvests have a smoothing effect on the bark. But much of this will be too hard to compress.
One of the reasons why cork works so well in a bottle, and in flooring and shoes, for example, is that it compresses. In fact it is the world’s only natural solid that may be compressed on one end and not increase its size on the other end. That is the reason why it seals a bottle so well. So you want to maintain that elasticity as much as you can.
Visiting Blogger For the first and second harvest, is it possible to use the bark for other purposes?
Carlos de Jesus Yes, it is. There is flooring, for example. It does not require the same elasticity you need of a bottle cork. You can use it for insulation. This is a good example because it is a 100% natural product; there are no glues in it.
Visiting Blogger How do you store the bark until it goes to processing?
Diogo Campilho We sell it only after 21 days from when harvested. Why? Because of the humidity on the bark. We store the bark in stacks 2 meters high and 10 meters long.
Visitin Blogger You’re waiting 21 days so you’re selling on cork weight and not on water weight?
Carlos de Jesus Yes, basically. There is something I want to emphasize. When Diogo says that he puts the stacks onto plastic, not directly in contact with the soil, that is absolutely fundamental. About TCA, you cannot defeat anything measured in nanograms just by using curative measures. Everybody loves miracle cures. We all like to open the newspaper and find that ‘XYZ’ disease was cured.
We also need prevention. Prevention starts right here in the forest. So when Diogo cuts the lower end of the plank he is making my life easier. When he then keeps all those stacks from contact with the soil where you have all the precursors of TCA, he’s making life difficult for those precursors! So when we have to apply curative measures, which we still need to have, you’re not applying curative measures upon a huge departure base; but on a much lower departure base. It is one thing to deal with a big migraine, it is quite another to deal with the headache at its onset. But if you have a headache everyday, don’t take an aspirin everyday. (laughs) Go and find out why you have that headache!
Traditionally we didn’t talk [to the cork oak growers]. Our grandparents were playing a zero sum game. They wanted to sell as high I possible; I wanted to buy as low as possible. And we would meet every nine years around that zero sum game. But that is not how you establish confidence! That is not how you understand the other guy’s problems. They think it is very easy for us; we think it is very easy for them. But it is not! It is a very, very complex relationship, especially when you have more plastics and screw caps coming onto the market. I cannot deliver the quality that you guys demand [the wine drinking public] if he doesn’t know what I need.
So the amount of dialogue that we have today is completely different than what we had as little as ten years ago. That makes a big difference.
Diogo Campilho A few more things I want to show you. In the soil we make pH adjustments and we use the organic manure from the our more than 1000 cattle and 3000 sheep. We use no irrigation.
Visiting Blogger Do you prune the trees?
Diogo Campilho Yes, but only in the beginning. We remove the branches lower on the trunk and prefer the straighter limbs.
Visiting Blogger Why does the ground have to be kept so bare?
Carlos de Jesus So bare? It doesn’t have to be. It is their choice to do so. But you have to realize one thing. If you look around you will see you are looking at sand. If you take away the cork oaks there will be nothing here, not even this grass. This area is prone to desertification. The cork oak plays an effective role. Imagine this sandy soil in the Summer when it is 110 degrees fahrenheit out there and 70 degrees in the forest! Nothing would survive without the trees.
Visiting Blogger Are you saying that if the humans disappeared for 100 years this would all be desert?
Carlos de Jesus If the humans disappeared this would be a much better place for the animals. If the cork oak disappear this will be a much worse place for both animals and people. You can take people out of this world and nothing happens to the world. There are plenty of Hollywood films that tell you about that. (laughs) The point here is not people protecting the oaks as much as the oaks protecting people.
He owns the trees but he doesn’t own the trees. Because he cannot cut them down. If a tree is dead we have to ask for permission to cut it down. We need to give something back. And what the oaks demand is very little. They give a lot. To me one of the most important things that the oaks give is the ability to show the world that economic, social and environmental issues can co-exist. You do not have to choose one or the other. These guys have been around for decades and decades illustrating that you can have it all.
We are then shown a demonstration of how the bark is removed.
Diogo Campilho I want to explain one thing. Normally this kind of job is done to a living tree! I don’t know if you know that the harvesting is done in June. Why? Because that is when there is a good relationship between the humidity and the heat. It would be impossible to remove the cork from the tree now [Nov. 1st] through Spring. For each tree there are two guys working. So we have a total of nine couples, eighteen people, harvesting oak; and we have four women who pick up the planks immediately and put them on a tractor to be taken to the stacks. A good average per tree would be 45 kilos.
Carlos de Jesus The bark is now dry. If you were to touch the trunk immediately after a proper harvest it would be wet. Not with sap but with moisture. The sap runs inside, in the wood of the tree.
Diogo Campilho Over there you can see a tree with the number six written on it. That means it was last harvested in 2006. This tree has no number on it because it was harvested in 2009. So this is a cork tree that was harvested this last June.
I hope my great-grand children will still be able to harvest these trees.
Visiting Blogger Is this an average density of trees for a cork forest?
Carlos de Jesus It really depends. If your comparing to the rest of the Alentejo it is pretty much average. In some other areas they can be quite dense. Here it is about 60 trees per hectare.
Visiting Blogger Once the cork is harvested I am curious as to what you do with the waste after all products are made?
Carlos de Jesus Nothing is wasted, absolutely nothing. I’ll give you an example. The plant your going to visit this afternoon, 95% of it’s energy needs come from renewable sources. And that renewable source is essentially cork dust. So when the granules are so fine that nothing else can be made with them, we use them as fuel. Nothing is wasted. This is one of the things I like the most.
We pile back onto the bus and head for the grounds of the Quinta da Logoalva de Cima itself for a lunch. The dirt roads were rutted with tractor and truck ruts. In our full sized air-conditioned bus the way was slow. How strange to be straddling the generations of viticultural and cork agricultural practice, experiencing the whiplash of historical/modern moments in such a behemoth as was our bus. Its garish splashes of blue and white, its logo bigger than a man, all was very much out of place among the coffee brown of the oaks and the blond weeds.
We enjoyed a brilliant lunch. I am sure I speak for all of my colleagues in offering great thanks to Diogo de Campilho for his generosity.
Next stop: The Amorim cork processing facility AI Coruche.
Admin
In part 1 of my visit to Carcavelos on a brilliant Fall morning described in Carcavelos Wine, A Family History, I introduced readers to José and Licete Sequeira. Now we may learn a bit more about the family’s winery, Quinta da Rosas. We must also pay our respects to husband and father, Antonio Eduardo Costa Sequeira (pictured). But first there are the ghosts wandering the ruins of Carcavelos to visit.
I had gone to the seaside town about 20 minutes by train from Lisbon to look for the grounds of the proposed Carcavelos wine museum. After a disappointing search, yes, I did find the museum site, the long abandoned Quinta do Barao. But I had met no one to tell me the story. Fate was to win the day when turning to leave, I met the owner of a small shop, José Maria Sequeira. This dutiful, soft-spoken man is the great-grandson of an important Carcavelos winemaker, (also named) José Maria Sequeira, himself the son of Antonio Duarte d’Oliveira, the founder of Quintas das Rosas in the 19th century.
José locked up his shop at one o’clock and took me to meet his mother, Licete. An elegant, intense woman, she was to show me, among many other interesting artifacts, two of the eight four-inch thick volumes of historical material on the wine history of Carcavelos her recently passed husband Antonio Sequeira had compiled over the years. (As a side note, as voluntary vice-president of the local Fire Station, she is currently working on a book about its century of service to Carcavelos. And motivated by her drive to tell her family’s story, she’s decided to begin learning the English language!)
In this, part 2, I pick up the story just before José must return to his shop. As before, he provided a translation of Licete’s remarks when our shared French, Licete’s and mine, failed us.
–José begins to bring out old bottles of Carcavelos wines. [Additional photos to come.]
Admin What magnificent bottles!
Licete Sequeira There is also very good wine in California.
–Always with a task to complete, Licete walks from the living room.
José Maria Sequeira Here are wines from my great-grandfather’s farm, Quinta das Rosas.
Incredible! I am afraid to touch them.
JMS But it is your work!
What happened to that second ‘l’ in ‘Carcavelos’? The town is now spelled with only one.
JMS It fell down! (laughs)
–Licete returns to the room with two thick yellow binders.
Licete Theses are two of the eight collections of documents on the history of the wine of Carcavelos my husband gathered over the years. Without these, work like this, you lose the stories.
Yes. In California we have that problem. Are you going to have these published? Or give them to the museum?
Licete It is too soon….
–Licete leaves the binders with us and goes back into to the kitchen.
JMS When she met my father they knew each other for three years. They then were married for 42 years; they were always together. It was a big loss when he died five years ago. My father very much liked Carcavelos. As you can see he did a lot of research. In these books are the original documents of the sale of the Quinta, the number of bottles made, the price and where they were sold, labels, pictures, menus, postcards…
You are coming back on Tuesday? We’ll find a time when my little brother Eduardo can speak with you.
–Licete returns to the living room with a bottle she then gives to me.
This is for me?
JMS Yes. It is a Moscatel from Setúbal. She has a large collection of Ports, more than a hundred. This Moscatel is as good as those.
Thank you, Licete. I don’t think this wine is anywhere available in America.
JMS It is difficult to find in Portugal as well.
–We say our farewells. I leave on the train for Lisbon, pleased to know I shall be returning in two days to speak with Eduardo.
Tuesday, November 3rd.
I am always on time. To be a minute late to this reacquaintance would open the door to the slightest doubt. I can’t let that happen. When I enter his store at three minutes to one, José looks at me as if it is the most natural thing in the world that I have remained true to my word. He has hit upon the secret of Fate and simply does not doubt that we were to meet again. He closes shop at one o’clock and soon we are sitting with, Licete (she makes an all-to-brief appearance) and José’s ‘little’ brother, Eduardo Nuno Ramos Costa Segueira. I very quickly warm to this gentleman. He tells it like it is.
Eduardo Nuno Sequeira The business interests care only about buildings and for houses. They want to make quick money. They don’t care about the environment or wines; they care only about euros. That is the problem. The Quinta do Baroa, where the museum is to be built, was cut in half by the highway about ten years ago.
José Maria Sequeira They said one part was for the museum, here in Carcavelos, and the other part in Oeiras was sold for a luxury hotel, a VIP Sheraton. But they will be planting on the Carcavelos side, on the grounds of the museum, a one hectare vineyard to help bring back Carcavelos wine.
ENS As they’ve done near Montmartre in Paris.
How much wine is still being produced here? Who is still making it?
ENS Carcavelos wine is now being produced at the Agronomical Station [a university extension] in Oeiras, and also in Caparide [a small, nearby town]. The seminary there produces wine. There are three growers in all: in Oeiras, the Quinta da Cima (they have a new label), the seminary in Caparide, the Quinta da Ribeira de Capride, and Quinta Dos Pesos here in Carcavelos. Just how much they make I am not quite certain. But it cannot be a lot.
There is a very funny story about this wine [see pic of Eduardo holding the bottle of Quinta das Rosas above]. Not even my father or my grandfather ever saw a bottle of this wine because they stopped the production of the wine in the time of my great-grandfather, when my grandfather [Antonio Duarte Sequeira] was a little boy. And then some eight years ago, during an exhibition of Carcavelos wine, some lady appeared with these two bottles asking if anybody wanted to buy them. (laughs) My father was completely astonished!
–We decide to drive to Oeiras, José, Eduardo and myself, to visit the vineyards of the Agronomical Station. Licete has been on the phone in a most animated conversation. She quickly shows my a half dozen web sites to help with my research. Her plan, in keeping with her husband’s ambition, it to eventually put all of his collected material on an internet site for all of the world to explore.
Ciao, Licete. Enchanteé.
Licete Ciao! Bon travail! Bon Voyage!
As we walk to Eduado’s car we pass down a maze of well-kept streets and white-walled boulevards. Along with the apartment buildings and smaller housing complexes there are, indeed, numerous white-washed earthen walls of quite substantial height. Well over six feet in many instances, it is nearly impossible to see what is on the other side. To my surprise very often the walls close in open, undeveloped land. Acres and acres of such open land are contained behind walls all throughout the Carcavelos municipality. We came upon one very special expanse.
JMS and ENS Over this wall is my grandfather’s farm, the land anyway. The owners haven’t built here yet. When my grandfather sold the farm they put in the contract that 40% of the land must be for public use. They are delaying building because they want all the land for themselves. (laughs) And just at the end of this street there starts another farm, the Quinta da Alagoa. It’s a garden or a park now. It dates back to 1900. You saw bottles of their wine at Licete’s house.
At every corner you turn you can see a farm.
What happened to the building was a crime. It was habitable. There were people living there. Then they sold the farm to the state. They left the house with everything remaining inside. But then the house was completely assaulted, destroyed by vandals. They use to light fires inside. After two or three fires the house was completely destroyed. It was also supposed to be a museum. (bleakly laughs) We cannot go in but there remain the tunnels of the adega where they stored the wine.
As you can see, the Quinta da Alagoa is only a small part of the garden. It was a big property. When we were children we used to play here and sometimes we would get lost because of the dense vegetation. There is a small pond just over there. Just under the water there is a sculpture of a crocodile. We lost ourselves in the trees and bushes, in this part. Many of the houses around here were built on the land of the Quinta, but at least they kept some of it for a garden.
JMS You remember I told you about the towers blocking the wind on the vineyards of the Quinto do Barao? Eduardo tells me that it was an excuse.
ENS The reason was economics. They very much wanted to sell it. They felt the wine was not giving a good profit, not when you could sell it for so much more for building. In the last years they began reducing the number of bottles produced each year. They cut back the vineyards until they finally stopped completely.
This building here is the oldest part of the Quinta da Alagoa, the one with the iron supports around it. It is from the 1700s. The iron work is recent. The supports were put in because it is all about to fall. They, the government, are trying to protect it. You see the pool behind us. It is very old, where the family use to swim [not pictured].
–We finally arrive at Eduardo’s car and drive off to the vineyard of the Agronomical Station in Oeiris.
How much wine did Quinta da Alagoa produce at full capacity?
ENS I don’t know. It would be in my father’s notes. He even has notes on the number of eggs laid at Quinta da Alagoa. How many liters of milk produced. He had many record books. He went to people’s houses asking for information. And when people in the town would find things about our wine or area they would come to him with it.
Where did his passion for documentation come from?
ENS He was a collector, of stamps, coins; he collected everything. I think it’s the mix of the collections with his hometown. He was interested not only in the wine history but of all things about Carcavelos.
–We arrive at the Agronomical Station, an unremarkable, utilitarian building. Students, but only a few, move down the narrow halls. Eduardo speaks with the secretary, asking for directions to the vineyards and the adega. We learn that it is closed. Not to be discouraged we get permission to to go as far as we may. Having passed two large vineyards along the way to the adega, we think we have seen all the vineyards planted. We are about to be enlightened as we come to a halt at a locked gate.
The adega is on top of a rise 500 meters in the distance. Acres of additional vineyards scramble up the slope opposite the adega, just out of reach.
José is not one to be denied at this final moment. He knows I’ve a meeting in Portugal in an hour and that he must get back to his shop. He tells me I’ve come too far to let a barricade stop us. So it is that we trudge up the hill. Eduardo eventually follows after turning the car around for a quick get away.
José and I are very surprised by the abundance of new, young vines and by the acreage still waiting to be cultivated. Row after new row we begin to get a real sense of just how seriously Oeiras is taking the challenge to bring the Carcavelos DOC back to prominence. As we reach the top of the hill out of the adega appear three startled students/teachers. They work the vineyard and the adega. Will they will throw us out? Eduardo catches up to us and there begins a delicate conversation. We learn for the first time that we are standing in front of the Adega Casal da Manteiga. And that the harvest ended September 17th.
They kindly provide us with a brochure published for visitors. In it we read that production has moved from the Estação Vitivinicola de Dois Portos to the 1800s Adega do Casal de Manteiga in the Quinta do Marquês de Pombal, where we now stand. The wine will be released under the ‘Conde de Oeiras’ label. Most importantly we read that 2007 and 2008 yielded 37,100 and 28,230 liters of wine respectively. Figures from 2001, by contrast, put production at 7,050 liters. We further learn that the 12.7 hectares currently under cultivation will be expanded to a total of 20 hectares by 2012. This is very good news, indeed.
The three of us walk down the hill in pleasant reflection upon what we have together discovered. Our spirits have lifted. José finally breaks the silence.
JMS I hope they keep the vines growing for a long time. I think that there is hope after all.
End of part 2
Admin
Colares is centuries-old wine growing region on the Atlantic Coast of Portugal. A forty minute train ride from Lisbon, Colares enjoys a very different, adaptive agricultural practice than that found in vineyards only a few kilometers inland. The vines are planted in sand. Actually that is not quite true. The sand is excavated and the vines planted on the clay layer beneath, often to a depth of 3-4 meters, and then the cane is progressively buried in sand as the it grows. As the reader will discover, this practice has had a number of interesting consequences, including the survival of the perhaps the greatest acreage, around 12-14 acres, of pre-phylloxera vines in the whole of Europe. Granted DOC status in 1908, the authorized grapes are equally adaptive and rare, Ramisco and Colares Malvasia. But details of all of this may be read below. Enologist/winemaker Francisco Figueiredo of the Adega Regional de Colares was my guide.
As has been true of my every waking moment since touching down in this astonishing country to attend the European Wine Bloggers Conference, Colares, too, provided both intellectual pleasures and something like heartache. I spent time in pre-Olympic Barcelona and returned years later to find old neighborhoods I had known utterly transformed. Much was swept away in the march toward modernization and something like international respectability. A similar transformation is also underway everywhere in the small portion of Portugal I traveled. And wine making traditions themselves are in the crosshairs, as my earlier interview with Virgilio Loureiro made perfectly clear. Colares is yet another example. Development, especially of weekend homes for Lisbon’s wealthy, has taken many vineyards.
The Ramisco grape produces wines that are out of international favor. Lean, low alcohol, high in acid, requiring many years of cellaring to become approachable, the wines of Colares are challenging; a different kind of reflection about wine is required of us. And if the challenge is refused or ignored, then Colares inches closer to oblivion.
Below you will find a mix of historical and current pre and post harvest photos, many from Francisco. I arrived well after the harvest. Some of the topics he discusses are best illustrated by images taken before my arrival.
This is the first of a two part interview. (Part 2)
Admin How long have you been working here?
Francisco Figueiredo Ten years. This has been my tenth harvest. For the first few years I worked here only at harvest time. I was still studying. I’m an agronomist and have done post-graduate work in enology. Since then I have worked here in Colares. I also give support to growers/producers not in the Colares region but in the Estremadura region. I’ve always been in this region. My parents live here. So I’ve known the region well since I was a child.
The Colares DOC is a very small wine region. It is between the Sintra Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean, which is very near. It is a short line along the coast, the demarcated region. And we have to meet two conditions for the wine to be Colares DOC. The vines have to be planted in sandy soils, and as we will see, it is loose sand, like beach sand; and we have to make the wine using mainly two local grape varieties. The red is called Ramisco and the white is called Malvasia.
The vineyards are very traditional and quite unique. They are old vines, mainly, ungrafted and pre-phylloxera, some of them still. Because of that we don’t have to use American rootstock. We plant the vines directly on the clay that is underneath the sand, not in the sand itself. To plant a vineyard we dig down in the sand to the clay layer, which can be from 1/2 a meter to 4-5 meters deep. The vines are planted in the clay for the roots to get the moisture, the humidity and the nutrients; then gradually we place sand around the vine as it grows. It takes about two years until the terrain is level again.
Is there a qualitative difference in the grapes whether a vine is planted 1/2 a meter or 4 meters?
FF No, not exactly. The main difference is that if we get the clay layer closer to the surface we can produce a little bit earlier. We don’t trellis the vines. We are doing some experiments but in the traditional vineyards the vines are not trellised. They are left on the ground. And that is important for maturation because of the heat off the sand. The heat reflects off the sand and helps the maturation go a little bit faster. That is important because we are in a region with a lot of humidity and moisture, lots of wind and mists, fog. It is usually 10 degrees celsius less here than on the other side of the mountain and Lisbon during the summer. So the maturation is slow. We usually harvest late, around the beginning of October. The last week of September, beginning of October we are harvesting the sandy soil vines.
The sandy region called Chão de Areia (meaning sandy soil), has a sub-region called Chão Rijo where the soil is only clay. It means ‘hard soil’. They are more like trellised vineyards, with higher production [yields] as well. We use different varieties on those clay soils. But we can’t use the Colares DOC designation on the labels. They are sold as table wine or labeled Estremadura regional of regional Lisboa.
Is sand constantly being added to this area or is there erosion?
FF No. We protect the terrain with free stone walls. And we also use dry cane palisades to protect the vines from the strong ocean winds. So there is constant shelter. The vines and the sand is protected.
What kind of yield do you get from an average Colares vine?
FF We get very low yields; one and a half to two tons per acre. In the clay soil you can get around eight to twelve tons per acre. Much more. That’s a big difference!
How many winegrowers are there in the Colares DOC?
FF There are 55 associates. But most are small. The total sandy soil area is about 12 to 14 acres. A very small production. Unfortunately the area has gone down. Not now. It’s stable now for the last ten years, with a small increase. But we have lost a lot of vineyards. In the 60s and the 70s there was a lot of development. We are very near the mountains and the sea. This is a place people want to build homes, people from Lisbon. Most are weekend homes here. [We are driving along the coast. Large homes and apartments climb up the hillsides] All of this used to be vineyards. Not in my time! I am 30 years old.
About the matter of the preservation of the Colares vineyards. Do you go before city hall to argue that a development shouldn’t proceed because of the vineyards it would destroy, that your patrimony is at stake?
FF Yes. We are inside Sintra/Cascais Natural Park, which should be protected. But it isn’t. It is very difficult. And of course for someone outside even if they wanted to invest in a vineyard would find it very difficult because the price of the land is very, very high. People are expecting to sell for construction, not vineyards.
What legal protections do the winegrowers have?
FF Practically none.
So someone could walk up to a grower tomorrow and offer them a large sum of money and there would be no objection.
FF Yes.
Francisco added to this subject in a separate email. “I can’t recall any government role in the direct preservation of vineyards. Indirectly the government supports wine sales, mainly outside, through ViniPortugal and partially funding exportation projects. The only thing I can recall regarding the Colares vineyards were two specific measures which gave some annual funding to the grape growers. The objective was for growers to maintain the landscape aspects related to the sandy soil vineyards (conservation of the free stone walls and the dried cane palisades). One of these fundings came from the Sintra-Cascais Natural Park Authority (the protocol only lasted 1 of the intended 5 years due to lack of money!). The other was a specific environmental measure from the Government which lasted 5 years and ended 2 years ago). None of these fundings were directly made to avoid selling the vine land. Wine is one of the agricultural products that the government supports more intensely, but not by trying to avoid the selling of property (that would be difficult because we are talking about private property). I can’t recall any protest related to the selling of a vineyard.”
FF This road we are on used to be all dirt. It is asphalt now. They put the sewer line down the middle of the road. I am beginning to worry about this. We are in one of the main growing areas, a place called “Chão Verde”, outside the small town of Fontanelas. These are probably the only vineyards in the world with a sewage system outside the vineyard! It is very difficult.
Are there people in the government who are sympathetic to the issue of preservation?
FF Yes. It is not with me directly, but the directors of the Adega Regional are in constant contact with associations and politicians to try to make some progress for the vineyards. But it is difficult. It’s difficult.
[We get out of the car.] This is an old vineyard. You can see the stone walls and the dry cane palisades. In the vineyards we usually grow the vines with apple trees. They are also low. It is very common to see this type of association.
The apple trees are blossoming now…
FF That is because we had a lot of heat in the past few weeks. You came at the wrong time of the year to see vines. It’s after harvest. These are very old vines. They still produce. This is one row. Over there, beyond the free stone wall is another vineyard. One of the things we do is raise the grapes so that they are not in direct contact with the hot sand. They can get burned. We prop the bunches up with a small stick.
It sure doesn’t look like Napa Valley! Someone driving through who did not know of Colares’ viticultural history would not ’see’ anything.
FF That is true. (laughs) It is obvious that there can be no mechanization in these vineyards. So we are doing experiments with low trellis systems to see if it is possible to mechanize the vineyards, to make them more economical and more affordable. All the picking now is done by hand. But so it the spraying and the digging of the vineyards for planting. And it is all done with the family.
With respect to the families, do these vineyards pass from generation to generation? Are the young interested in continuing?
FF I am afraid that the next generation isn’t very interested in wine growing. Some of the growers are old people from 60 to 70 years old. But I don’t see that their sons are very interested in the wine growing business. They have other jobs doing other things. The wine growers themselves have other jobs. Some work on different agricultural products. Others keep the vines as a hobby. The cooperative has to make some effort to try and keep tending those vineyards that will be left behind when the older generation passes. That is the only chance for the region: the cooperative will have to work directly taking care of these vineyards when the time comes.
So that I understand, all the 55 associates of the cooperative harvest their grapes and then send them to the cooperative. All the grapes are mingled, fermented together, and bottled under the single Adega Regional de Colares label.
FF Exactly. We just separate the grapes from the sandy soils [Chão de Areia] from the clay soils [Chão Rijo]. With the clay soils we differentiate two types of vineyards: the ones that produce ‘less quality’ grapes, let’s say, so those grapes go into simple table wine; and the best grapes from the clay soil go to the better Regional Estremadura wine. In the sandy soils there is no need for any differentiation. This is, by the way, the only DOC where the Ramisco grape is grown, and the Malvasia Colares. But it is also permitted in the Estremadura Regional, of course.
So is the Ramisco grape itself in danger?
FF Fortunately, no. I will show you another vineyard where we, along with the School of Agronomy, the Technical University of Lisbon, have selected throughout the region several cuttings from the best vines, and we have planted them in this vineyard. There are several clones in the region. They are now being kept, safeguarded in the vineyard. The idea is to protect the varieties.
This is a very old wine region. We have records of consistent wine production since almost the foundation of our nationality, since the 1100s.
These rocks that make up the walls, where did they come from?
FF Usually each grower has a piece of land on the sandy soil and on the clay soil, sometimes more pieces of land. So when the planted the ‘hard soil’ vineyards they took out the stones and they brought them to the sandy soil terrain to build the walls.
Notice the trenches of this vineyard being filled. As you can see, we plant after making a trench, a ditch. We put the sand to the side and gradually fill it in as the vine grows. In this area we had to dig about three meters down. I saw how deep when they were paving the road. It was about three and a half meters down to the clay layer.
We see a gentleman cross the road ahead of us.
Oh, this is Mr. Gonçaol. He is an associate of the adega. You are lucky. His vineyard is closed but this way we can see it. You can see again the apple trees. Always the protection, the shelters. These rows or groups of rows separated by the dry cane palisades of vines we call manta. The direct translation of manta would be a blanket. The clay in this vineyard is about one and a half meters down.
I see he has dug around the vines. What is this for?
FF On of the jobs that is done this time of year, this season. The job is to take these roots out, to cut them away. Sometimes we will also add manure for the vines at this point. The roots are of no interest to us. We want only the deep ones. And there is no irrigation. It is all dry farmed. That is the importance of planting the roots on the clay. No drip irrigation. We have some modern vineyards, not from our association, but from another association, which they drip irrigate. You can easily see that they are not strong vines because of that. So this is the natural way to have water, to plant them directly on the clay.
And over here he has new plantings.
So all of these vines are ungrafted, of course. And the source of all the cuttings?
FF All the cuttings are done here. There is only one nursery site for Ramisco vines just in case someone needs cuttings for a vineyard. For the traditional growers like Mr. Gonçaol, they do their own cuttings. And they choose only from the best vines.
Now, you don’t have phylloxera here. What are the disease and pest pressures?
FF The main pressure here is powdery mildew…
And second homes…
FF (laughs) …and building construction. That’s a real pest pressure! But of simpler pests we have what we call Cicadella, sharpshooters. Growers like Mr. Gonçaol didn’t know about the pest. It started about five years ago. We have seen some increase in the average temperature. And the sharpshooter came from the Alentejo to the north.
We say goodbye to Gonçaol and continue on our tour.
End of part 1
Admin
I came to Portugal knowing very little apart from what was commonly available in standard English language wine texts. Before touching down in Lisbon in advance of the European Wine Bloggers Conference, I could recite from memory, as any studious schoolboy could, all of the country’s major wine growing regions, perhaps a dozen of her most important grapes, the names of some of the larger producers, and a few truisms about the Portuguese wine culture as a whole. While it is good to know such things (it can render you an instant ‘expert’ among a crowd of English speakers, for example), such information does not get at the heart of the matter of the meaning of wine in Portugal. To acquire that knowledge a kind of cultural submersion or surrender is required. To speak to the right people is particularly important.
During my time in Portugal I can only claim to have inched closer to an understanding. It was certainly not the understanding that I was expecting. I spoke to many people, perhaps no one so well informed as Prof. Virgilio Loureiro of the Instituto Superior de Agronomia in Lisbon. The former winemaker at the Dao’s Quinta dos Roques and Quinta das Maias, Professor Loureiro has been working very diligently for many years to document and to preserve elements of Portugal’s threatened wine traditions, history and culture. As may be read, much has been lost, yet much may still be saved.
It is my curious fate to have listened closely to the man and to have thereby had impressed upon me the ethical obligation to join in Prof. Loureiro’s effort. Passing along his words is a start.
Admin Thank you very much for agreeing to speak with me. I’ve recently been to Carcavelos and Colares. Quite fascinating histories may be found in those DOCs.
Virgilio Loureiro Colares is amazing. The vineyard landscape is really unique. Have you tasted the old whites?
Not the old whites yet, no.
VL They are absolutely amazing! The reds are very interesting. But the whites are really amazing. It is possible to find 40 to 50 year-old whites, like the best Montrachet’s in Burgundy. But here in Portugal, unfortunately people don’t understand this style of wine. It is really a pity. They have no idea how to speak to the world of wine about what treasure we have. This is a pity.
I am here for a wine bloggers conference. I come from America but most assembled are from Europe. What happens when the world fully wakes up to the quality and uniqueness of Portuguese wines? Is there a risk to Portugal’s wine culture?
VL It is not only a risk. The risk is already fact. The loss that we have actually realized is a tragedy. Most of the best wine regions we have in Portugal are producing wines in the Californian and Australian style. They put in a lot of American oak; they put in 6 to 10 grams of sugar to round the style; they are extremely aromatic and with very low acidity, all so that wines may be drinkable very early. This is now a normal approach for most wineries and of most enologists.
Mr. Nossiter, when he was here for the first time, he was very sad because he didn’t know the situation in Portugal. But he knew very well the situation in Spain. And the problem of Portugal is that it is in the last position of European development, but is moving in exactly the same direction as Spanish wines. It is a pity.
I don’t know if you know of the famous Spanish figure of Don Quijote de la Mancha, well, I am the Don Quijote of Portugal trying to fight against this globalization of Portuguese wines. And I have some friends, one of them is a very important person, it is Mr. Nossiter. So I’m trying. (laughs)
Now I have a very exciting project to put on the map the important historical regions for Portuguese wines. I have here some pictures I can show you to make clear the potential we have. Because we still have time to preserve a lot of treasures of wine production mostly in the Mediterranean area in general, treasures that have been almost completely destroyed in Spain (in Italy there remains a little).
We have real Roman wine being made exactly as it was 2000 years ago, in clay jars, in the south of Portugal, in Alentejo. Here the wines in clay jars are protected with pine resin, like in old Greece, and the wines are made exactly as in a Roman villa 2000 years ago in the territory of what is now called Alentejo. The people from the small villages in the Alentejo make this type of wine for family consumption.
This winery has 19 jars. They produce whites and reds. They produce around 20,000 liters per year. But the owner does not completely respect the old technology because he puts his wine in glass bottles. Still it is a good approach. Some of the jars are as old as 400 years. And what happens in them is amazing in enological terms. I really don’t understand the process scientifically, but when we have a lot of oxidized wine, if we pass that wine across the solid parts of the bottom of the jar, the oxidation is practically eliminated. The wine becomes o.k.
I am now writing a book titled ‘Portuguese Wines From the Bronze Age To the 21st Century’. I collected a lot of history in this region. When the wine was sold out they imported wine from the center of Portugal. But when they passed that wine from the center of Portugal across the solid parts of the jars the style of wine was changed to that of this region!
Today, first they drink this wine and then they drink the modern technological wine. Why? Because it is a very, very special wine. The technological process used is the opposite of the technology described in modern treatises of enology. Both white and red are made with native yeasts, of course, but also with the solid parts of the grapes in the jars. And after fermentation the cap falls and acts like a filter. The effect on the wine when it passes through this filter changes it completely, it changes the aroma; and in the whites, they become lemon-yellow in color, fruity, with a very, very special style which is completely typical of the wine.
Today in Portugal we no longer have the artisans to make the jars. We are trying to recover the art.
We also have Cistercian wine from the center of Portugal which is made exactly like that of the monks in 12th century Burgundy. It is special because it is the only survivor of this type of wine in Portugal. And the reason is very easy to understand. It is a micro-climate they have in that region which gets wines with 14 degrees of alcohol and with it the possibility of developing into vinegar.
Ten years ago when I discovered this wine there were around 5000 wine growers. Today there are perhaps less than 500. But now I think it is protected by law, a law we promote, so it is probably safe. But that is not enough. We need to push it so that it can become known in the world of wine. And this is the challenge we now have.
Another wine is from the Azores Islands. The vineyard landscape of Pico Island, as you can see, is absolutely amazing. It is flat, with walls made of volcanic rocks, more rocks than the Great Wall of China. Only with this idea is it possible to conceive of the work done in the islands. And the wine is very, very special. It has strong acidity, and with good technology it is possible to make wines with extreme longevity. They become very nice at ten to fifteen years old.
In that picture you can see that there is no soil, only rocks. And each square has two or three vines, no more. This is unbelievable work. Forty kilometers! And most of the wine freaks from all over the world didn’t know this wine or its vineyards. And this is the typical winery used by them, with wooden screw presses, a Cato press, like those from Roman times.
In this picture you can see that the rocks are broken. They put the vine in the cracks. This has been the way since the 15th century. The technology didn’t change! (laughs)
Today I have another project, financed by the regional government, to improve the aging process of their fortified wines. They are very similar to the wines of Madeira. When the wines are well done they are of the same level of quality as the best wines of the Madeira.
I will soon have published an article on these matters in an American journal Chronica Horticulturae. I think it will be out in December. Next year we are organizing here in Lisboa the 2010 International Horticultural Congress. We’ll have workshops on winemaking and climate change. They invited me to write a small article on the history of wines.
I am also trying to recover the old grape varieties from the Douro. I’m making wine in the Douro Superior, near Foz Côa, near the Spanish border. It is a more preserved area of Douro. And I identified three small vineyards with pre-phylloxera vines. Most of the vines are of unknown varieties. Now I am trying to make a ‘new old’ vineyard by grafting buds from these very old vines of unknown varieties. I already have some wines! This year I made two different wines. Last year I made another one. And one of the red grape varieties has color in the juice [and flesh], like Alicante Bouschet and like Grand Noir. There are a very small number of these varieties [teinturier grape varieties, I believe he means. Admin]. And this is one such variety. The wine, again, is very special, really special.
Do you have allies in the Portuguese wine industry? Do you enjoy support from people who think like yourself?
VL Yes. But unfortunately they are not V.I.P.s. There are some people with sensitivity, with high culture and background, but unfortunately not V.I.P.s from the wine sector. This is the reason I call myself Don Quijote! You see? This is the reason why I so quickly established a friendship with Mr. Nossiter. He understands me.
What is the Portuguese government doing to protect these endangered wine regions?
VL Unfortunately, the Portuguese government is doing almost nothing to protect our historical wines, because they are neither considered an economical activity nor a historical patrimony. Furthermore, it is encouraging the vinegrowers to “modernize” their vineyards and wineries without criterion. In fact, the “wave of progress”, supported by public aids, is provoking a fast destruction of the remaining traditions (as happened in Spain and Italy recently). In some cases it would be better if the vineyards were under control of Ministry of Culture instead of the Ministry of Agriculture!
The vineyard landscape of Pico island is under protection of UNESCO. The only recognized (not really protected) Portuguese historical wine by law is the Cistercian wine of Ourém. At this moment, we are trying to protect the clay jar wine of Alentejo by a proposal submitted to the CVR of Alentejo (Regulatory Commitee).
How should Portuguese wines be marketed?
VL Today, the marketing strategy of Portuguese wine companies is based only on low price. It is impossible to promote these types of wines with centuries, millennia of historical age behind them. I think the best strategy for a small country like Portugal is to invest in the tradition and the culture; to say to the world that we have a lot of specialities, like France, like Spain. But Spain has practically destroyed this type of heritage.
The Portuguese wine heritage is different in all the world. I’m trying to convince the growers in Portugal that it is possible to protect it. How? Paying a fair price. For what? For the next generation, so that it has the stimulus to continue. Because, as you know, the younger generation today are very egoistic. They want to go to the big cities and abandon the traditions of the small village. The stimulus is to be found through the strengthening of the culture and by being paid the fair price to continue.
You, and Mr. Nossiter, people from the New World and also people from European culture can repeat this. There is one more thing I would like to say. These types of wines are completely out of fashion. As Mr. Peynaud of Bordeaux has said, ‘It is impossible to taste a wine from another age with a palate of this century”. We need to understand wines, of course. But I think ten minutes of talking is enough to understand wine! And with two or three tasting experiences it is enough to love wine. It is like tonic water. The first experience is not good, but the second is o.k.
Excellent. A quick observation about the Douro Boys.
VL The Douro Boys is another concept of wine. I respect them. I am a friend of most of them. But I think that they have some responsibilities that they don’t assume. They are known all over the world. They have the obligation to promote what we have here in Portugal.
Please give my regards to Mr. Nossiter. Next time you come we can arrange a visit to the past.
Sir, thank you.
VL Ken, it was a pleasure for me. I thank you because you can help me in my fight.
Admin
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Indeed, it is not too much to say that the modern history of fungicidal products well outnumber the targeted fungi by factors of ten. The reason is at once both simple and bewilderingly complex. All agricultural pests, whether virus, bacteria, insect or fungi, have multiple growth stages, multiple defenses and weaknesses at each of these stages, all have a local agri-cultural ecosystems where their pestilential fortunes may rise or fall; they frequently require vectors and all have various and specific adaptive responses, importantly, genetic responses. Take a look at the University of California’s Integrated Pest Management list of fungicides for wine grapes alone (partially reproduced here). Note the variety of Chemical Classes and of Modes of Action. Each responds to some aspect or combination of aspects of the targeted fungi’s life cycle, whether systemic or by contact.
