A Portuguese Wine Tasting

Recently the gods, having decided that my good deeds outweigh my bad deeds (like Bernard Kerik when he was Police Chief in NYC maybe?), ensured that I was invited to participate in a very special lunch and wine tasting put on by The Port Wine Institute, ViniPortugal, and the Portuguese Trade Commission. Lunch was in the private back room at Gramercy Tavern, a hallowed institution of fine dining in New York City.

There were about 15 distinguished folk at this event, and I'm talking about Rui Abecassis (the Deputy Trade Commissioner of Portugal), esteemed wine writers such as Jamal Rayyis of Food and Wine Magazine, David Talbot of Wine Enthusiast, and bloggers like our very own Dr. Vino. And Rui Reguinga, Portuguese wine maker and wine consultant guided us through our tasting.

I know that I'm probably supposed to write about this event if and only if I'm going to shower praise on the wines. But that's why I'm a blogger - I can report my real feelings about what I experienced. And although I really enjoyed a few of the wines (and the food was great), I was basically unimpressed with the overall lineup of wines we tasted before our lunch. I found the reds (8 of 10 wines were reds) to be almost uniformly big and characterless. Not memorable or emotional, business-like, the result of a focus group or something. Smooth and powerful, yes. But not my cup of tea.

Be warned - I have almost no context in which to place these wines. If I knew nothing about French wine and went to this kind of event, but it was French wine instead of Portuguese, and they poured only big manipulated Bordeaux wines, I might walk away thinking that I don't like French wine. For all I know, they poured only the Portuguese equivalent of big manipulated crowd-pleasing Bordeaux at this event. Are there soulful, lighter, elegant reds from Portugal? What is the Burgundy of Portugal, the Cru Beaujolais, the Chinon?

Anyway, here are a few wines that I liked. There was a lovely rosé, the 2006 Quinta da Alorna Touriga National Rosé from Ribatejo DOC, a large flat valley in the south-central part of Portugal. This wine had an absolutely gorgeous color, a nose of fresh berries, and a sweet berry palate with an interesting medicinal nuance. This wine retails for about $12, and I would buy it happily if I saw it on the shelf.

I enjoyed the 2005 Quinta do Poeira Douro. It was described as having "less structure, more elegance" by Mr. Reguinga, and maybe that's why it stood out for me. At 13.5% alcohol, it was lighter than many of the other wines. I liked the light nose with some cinnamon spice, the well balanced palate of spicy fruit with a bit of earth, the relaxed mouth feel. I do not know the retail price of this wine, so I have no idea whether or not it is a good value. But if it were under $20 I would happily buy it.

If I had to select one red to bring home to BrooklynLady and enjoy over dinner, it would be the 2005 Quinta da Bacalhoa of Terras do Sado, at about $29. This wine is 90% Cabernet Sauvignon and 10% Merlot -- that's right, a Bordeaux blend is the wine I liked most in the tasting. I liked the lovely dried rose petal nose, the pretty fresh berries and the overall feeling of the wine, light and elegant, but with deep and focused flavors, well balanced with good acidity. I didn't even notice the alcohol, and at 14.5%, that's impressive.

Let me say this right now - the revelation of the tasting for me was Tawny Port. I loved the Sandeman (beware of ridiculous website) 20 year old Tawny so much that I've looked in at least four stores for it so far, with no luck. Peter Cobb, a delightful English gentleman who lives and loves Port wine guided us through a tasting of four Ports, including a young ruby vintage Port by Quinta de Noval, a Fonseca 10 year old Tawny, and the Sandeman 20 year Tawny. I learned that Port wine is better served with a chill, that Tawny compliments cheese quite well, that the Tawny style really appeals to me, with its complex and oxidized nature, and that I would pay good money to have an afternoon of Port with Peter Cobb.

So thank you gods for smiling on me that afternoon. This was a wonderful afternoon of wine tasting, eating, and learning, and I met some great people too. And I'm going to find a bottle of 20 year old Sandeman Tawny before the holidays, I can promise you that.

Addendum: here is the full lineup of wines we tasted before our lunch:

1. 2006 Anselmo Mendes Muros de Melgaco, Vinho Verde
2. 2006 Quinta da Alorna Touriga National Rosé, Ribatejo
3. 2005 Campolargo Termeao, Beiras
4. 2005 Quinta dos Roques Touriga Nacional, Dao
5. 2004 Quinta de Chocapalha Reserva, Estremadura
6. 2005 Quinta da Bacalhoa, Terras do Sado
7. 2005 Jorge Moreira Poeira, Douro
8. 2004 Symington Family Estates Chryseia, Douro
9. 2005 Herdade dos Grous Reserva, Alentejo
10. 2004 Rui Reguinga Terrenus Reserva, Alentejo

WBW #38 - Portuguese Table Wine

This month's installment of Wine Blogging Wednesday is hosted by Gabriella and Ryan at Catavino, and the theme is Portuguese table wines. As you probably know by now, Lenn at Lenndevours began this tradition over three years ago now, and it continues to pick up steam.

One of the reasons that I love WBW is that it sometimes forces me out of my comfort zone. With the exception of a super cheap bubbly called Espiral Vinho Verde, I have never to my knowledge tasted Portuguese wine. The irony is, I am going to what will surely be an incredible event focusing on Portuguese wine in two weeks. But that is in the future, and this is now. So knowing essentially nothing about Portuguese wine, how should I choose a bottle for WBW? I thought it might make sense to try something that resembles wines I know, for the sake of comparison.

I love dry whites that are made to sip with local seafood, and so do lots of folks in Portugal, particularly in the northwest, apparently. The Vinho Verde (Green Wine) region is known for the Alvarinho grape, aka Albarino in Spain. The wines are known to be light, low in alcohol, brightly acidic, and sometimes with a bit of petillance, or fizz. That fizz is the carbon dioxide that's retained in the wine after malolactic fermentation. These wines are meant to drink young and to compliment the region's fresh and tasty seafood dishes.

BrooklynLady and I enjoyed some scallops for dinner the other night with a simple white wine, lemon, and butter sauce. Some broccoli rabe, an ear of late summer corn on the cob - not Portuguese fare, but seafood nonetheless. So with great curiosity (okay, BrooklynLady's had lots of Portuguese wine - I was the curious one), we opened our Alvarinho and toasted WBW 38.

2006 Antonio Esteves Ferreira Alvarinho Soalheiro, $17 (Chambers Street Wines).
I'm not gonna sugar-coat this, people. No matter how much we wanted to like this, it was just no good. And it wasn't corked or heat damaged or anything else. It's just a style of wine that is never going to get any traction in our house. The problem is, the wine I drank is not at all typical of Vinho Verde, and I learned that after drinking the wine, while wondering how on earth it could be so different from what we expected.

The wine had an attractive straw color with a nose of green apple, grapefruit, and vanilla cream. But the palate was flabby, totally unfocused, with an almost viscous texture. A little sweet, with almost no acidity at all, just a fat white jelly roll of a wine. And the wine did not taste or feel clean to me - I'm betting that there is all sorts of manipulation going on with this particular wine. Either that or the wine-making equipment wasn't clean, which is more common than you'd think. I re-corked it and figured we'd taste it again in a day or so to see if anything developed. Nope - same same same.

So what the heck is going on here?!? I read the entry on Vinho Verde in Jancis Robinson's Oxford Companion to Wine, and I picked up a really important clue from the following passage.

The Vinho Verde DOC officially divides into six subregions, distinguished by climatic differences and the white grape varieties grown there. The area around the town of Monção on the Spanish Border produces one of the best but least typical Vinho Verdes from the Alvarinho grape. Alcohol levels of up to 13% set these apart, and thanks to a combination of consumer demand and low yields, they are relatively expensive.

Well, my bottle is 12.5% alcohol and is indeed from the subregion of Monção. So I'm going to take a few guesses at what specifically is happening with my wine, and I'm hoping that the fine folks at Catavino, or anyone else, can raise me up from the depths of ignorance, tell me right from wrong.

The wine was totally and completely still - not a teeny bit of petillance. Did they skip the malolactic fermentation? Maybe, but it sure seemed smooth and buttery, the whole point of malo. I bet instead that they did malolactic but did not retain the CO2, maybe in some way attempting to separate the wine from the "average" Alvarinho, make it somehow more "international," or something.

The vanilla creaminess on the nose - that smacks of wood to me. Did they oak this wine? I'm gonna guess that the wine sees some small portion of new or used, but not neutral oak. Maybe 10%?

In any case, it is clear to me now that this wine is not representative of Portuguese Alvarinho. We wanted a bright and acidic dry white that worked well with seafood. We got a thick and creamy white that I think might be intended as an aperitif, or to compete with a California Chardonnay. So we're not done - we're coming back for more Alvarinho, but for now we're avoiding the Monção subregion.

Thanks to Gabrielle and Ryan for hosting, for creating such an informative site on wines from the Iberian Peninsula, and for urging me to get out of my comfort zone.