Quinta do Vale Meão

Translated to mean “of the valley in the meander,” Quinta do Vale Meão is situated in some of the best terrain in the entire Douro River Valley. Quintas are wine houses in Portuguese, Hacienda in Spanish. The Quinta here is on a peninsula where the Douro River makes a 90 degree turn from west to north, then 180 degree turn south, and then a 90 degree turn back to the west towards Porto.What makes the vineyards here so exceptional are, basically, everything. The soil is rocky, forcing the grapes to send their roots down deep, resulting in profound complexity. The climate is dry and sunny but with good ground water. This is essential for disease prevention and good growth…mature grapes at harvest. This combination allows for the best possible product.I chose to visit Quinta do Vale Meão for three reasons. First, I have never been and have always loved their wine. Second, they produce extremely high quality wine and are located not far from my small vineyards. Third, they export most of it to the United States, so we can actually find it back home! Like almost all high quality Douro red wine, it will need age, a minimum of seven years in my opinion. Ten, up to Fifty is even better! It is worth the wait!They produce two relatively easy to find levels; a very good “Tinto” (red table wine) around the $25 a bottle range, and a high end Estate-Grand Reserve level. Expect to pay $100 plus a bottle for those. And of course they make Port Wine, with some of the best Vintage Port in the industry. Good luck finding those, as I was only able to obtain one bottle on this visit for myself.If you find yourself in the high Douro, near the Spanish border, definitely reserve a tour and tasting. They also have a helicopter pad for true ease of movement. Next, on to Spain and some grapes grown inside an internationally recognized nature preserve, very much off the beaten, touristic, path.

What is “Old Vine?”

“Old Vine,” “Ancient Vine,” I have even seen “Gnarled Vines” grace the label of many wine bottles. Like many things in the consumer world we must peel back the marketing to find any true meaning.So what is an “Old Vine,” how old does it have to be? There are no true legal age limits to the term “Old Vine.” In most of Spain, it’s older than 30 years. In California, the vines must be 40 plus. The rest of the world mostly falls into this age range.Why does the age of a grape vine matter? When does it matter? There are two main factors I look at when I specifically reach for true “Old Vine” wine.The first factor I consider is where the grapes are grown. If they are being grown in very rocky, mountainous terrain, then age matters. Like all plants, grape vines get everything they need from the sun and the soil. Grapes grown in rocky terrain really have to fight to get their roots down to the water table, which can be more than 20 feet down. It can take the roots up to 30 years to get that deep. Once there, magic happens. The grapes can have amazing potential at this point!The next factor I consider is grape variety. The two easiest to find are Grenache and Zinfandel. Again, if the vintner did everything correctly, something magical happens as those grape varieties pass 40. The same can be said for the Portuguese varieties of the Douro.Most of my vines are growing in soils of granite, mica, and schist, on steep slopes, in a harsh environment. The majority of my vines are passing 97 years! The roots go very deep, up to 30 feet or more! My vineyard is located in a DOC where, legally, you cannot irrigate the vines after the grapes form, ensuring the highest quality of juice…no dilution.So for my vines to thrive for 97 years, and still going strong, mean that these “Old Vines” can give you grapes with an essence of complexity that younger vines could never achieve. But don’t just trust the label on the bottle, do a little research before buying. And to really get the full experience of my grapes you will just have to share a bottle with me!

Treasure Hunting

Do you hunt? A very open ended question to be sure. This is a wine article so you would assume that I am asking if you hunt for wine. If you read this week's first article on Wine Hunters then you might already have an answer.Well, now I am asking in a much bigger sense. All of the great explorers of the world were hunters; both in the traditional sense of chasing wild game, and the metaphorical sense, hunting for what lay over the horizon.I consider myself a hunter in all senses of the word. It is a mindset, an ethos. I am as equally excited for the pursuit as for the end achievement. The hike up the mountain is as enjoyable as the unparalleled view from the top.I am also intrigued by the rare and often overlooked in life. I also very much enjoy history. Wine has A LOT of both. As I traveled this week I had the chance to do some wine hunting, and with history as my guide I was not disappointed.The results were two very obscure, rather rare wines, both from Portugal. The first was a 1997 Carcavelos. A fortified wine from the smallest DOC in the world and a favorite of Thomas Jefferson.There is a book written by John Hailman titled “Thomas Jefferson on Wine” and includes a letter from Jefferson to Richmond Va. merchant James Brown requesting a quarter cask of wine. Jefferson writes “I would prefer good Lisbon, next to that Carcavallo.”Why was Jefferson hunting for Carcavelos so long ago? Carcavelos is NOT Port! It’s profile lies somewhere between Madeira and a aged Tawny Port. It is fortified but with a very unique character. Its profile is very complex; with raisin and citrus, earth and salty air, it dances across the tongue while wearing boots. My Carcavelos is made solely from the Ramisco grape and comes from the tiny region just west of Lisbon near the jet-setting coastal town of Cascais. The entire DOC only totals some 25 acres!!!The next is a 2009 Colares, also made from Ramisco. What makes Colares so unique is that it is some of the only wine in the WORLD that comes from ungrafted vines. The soils here (northwest of Lisbon) contain a lot of sand and were resistant to phylloxera, and therefore were never killed off.Colares doesn’t have anything similar to it in taste. It is like drinking a wine that came from the core of the earth, deeply complex with the hints of red cherry and acid. It is profound, a wine for the consummate wine hunter that will satisfy the deepest of wine geek in any of us.A good week of hunting for me, two true treasures! As I look forward to enjoying the fruits of my labor here are some words of wisdom from Thomas Jefferson: “I have lived temperately. ... I double the doctor’s recommendation of a glass and a half of wine each day and even treble it with a friend.”Cheers to the next hunt!

Aragon’s 11 May Tasting

It is very easy to get overwhelmed with all of the different wines of the world. The complexity of the wine world is a motivation for me, yet the opposite is true for many others. There are thousands of each kind of wine. How do you sort through them and find one you like? Can you even keep them all straight?If this overwhelming feeling explains your experience in the world of wine then I can help. The easiest way to sort through all of the wines that stare you down in the store is to NOT do it.Don’t guess your way down the wine isle, unless you like drinking experiments and wasting money. Picking the prettiest bottle has been proven to get you a sub-standard wine. Ask a vetted and qualified wine expert, we have a bunch of good ones around town. Want an even better way to sort through the world of wine and buy one you like? Taste it first!WOW, what a concept. Go to a wine tasting. If you like it then buy it. Guaranteed that you will like it again back home for dinner or at the next party with friends.If anyone reading this can prove that they bought tonight’s Wine of Note by just randomly bouncing down the wine isle on their own then I will buy them another bottle! Seriously.Taboadella Villae Branco 2021 is a white blend from the Dao DOC region of Portugal. Made from three indigenous grapes; Bical, Encruzado, and Cerceal, it has the citrus notes of a Sauvignon Blanc, the minerality of a Soave, and the body of a Chardonnay. It can go with any crustaceans, white fish, chicken, soup, or alfredo sauce dish.One question from a taster was “So what is it similar to?” Nothing, it is unique with aspects of several that are familiar. Thats the reason it is a Wine of Note. So don’t get overwhelmed by all of the wine out there, leaving your wine purchase to chance. Buy wine that you have tasted and liked, or recommend by a vetted wine expert. You will have a lot more fun that way.

Please do me a favor and pick the wine with the ugliest label.

Me: “How did you pick that wine?”

My friend: “I like the look of the label.”

I'm not sure if there is an actual study or any numbers out there that can tell us the percentage of wine sold based on how “pretty” the label looks, but my guess is a “pretty” high percentage. Drum roll please.

Corniness aside, there are sooooo many people that go in and buy wine solely based on the look of the label. The question is: If you choose a bottle of wine based on the way the label looks, will that get you a bottle of wine that you like more often than not?

From both experience and observation, I say NO.

My estimate is that 33.3% of the time, you will get a wine that you like by choosing solely on the look of the label. If you were blindfolded outside of a good wine shop and led to a random shelf to pick a random bottle, there is also a 33.3% chance that you would pick one that you liked.

There are amazing wines with beautiful labels out there. Tonight’s crowd favorite, by a very slim majority, was Broadbent’s Vinho Verde, which is an outlier; good, cheap, with an attractive label. Yet, more often than not, money spent on making the wine, not the label, will lead to a better product.

So, if you go to a place where they sell wine and there is no one there who can guide you to a wine that you like, leave! Go to a good wine shop curated by qualified, CERTIFIED, wine people and ask them for help picking out a wine. If you don’t have access to a good local wine shop, go in and pick the prettiest and the ugliest (or plainest) looking bottle that you can find. Do a taste test and see what result you get. Sometimes you might find that beauty is only skin, or label, deep.

So you think you have had Port. Part 3

I love Vintage and Crusted Port. I also really enjoy a quality red blend of “table” wine from the Douro. It can be super easy to get lost in the world of Port Wines. And how do you know if you have a quality red Douro blend? I spoke for just under two hours as the presenter at this February’s tasting of our local chapter of the American Wine Society, tasting and explaining how to navigate Portugal’s premiere wine growing region, the Douro.

Can you explain the difference between the four bottles in the photo? If you were presented these wines at dinner which would you choose? With a little knowledge on Port wine you can pick a quality Douro red. The key to begin to unlock quality wines from the Douro, the world’s first Wine Demarcated Region by the way, is Vintage Port. In the Douro, in the world of Port, not every year is a Vintage year. Vintage years must be declared by the vineyard and then approved by the Port Wine Institute located in Porto Portugal. To be a vintage year the growing conditions must be excellent all the way through harvest, ensuring an exceptional wine. If you know the Vintage years, and find a non-Port wine from a particular Vintage year, you are almost (nothing is every “certain”) guaranteed to have a quality Douro “table” (non-fortified) wine. Then you will need some time. I recommend almost any Douro red to have at least six, preferably eight years of age to make for a fantastic drinking experience.

So, Vintage year, 6 years of age, and you have a quality Douro Red. Simple enough. We sampled three Douro reds before moving to Port during our tasting. The next part in our series, Tawny Port.

“If you want to impress someone serve a Barolo.” East Hill Bottle Shop 18 Jan.

One of my favorite parts of wine tasting is listening to bold wine statements, said with such passion that it MUST be true. They don’t happen often, but when they do my entertainment factor goes to the next level. There were two “bold” wine statements this evening. The first was from a taster that was innocent yet passionate. The second by one of the employees in an attempt to answer a question. Both were wrong, and can absolutely mislead other tasters.“If you want to impress someone serve a Barolo.” This came from a fellow taster. “Wow,” I said, “Is there one that you go to?” The response was “No, they are all good.” I taste a fair amount of wine, and I have had some very good Barolos, but I have also had others that were so earthy and acidic that I poured them out. Barolo is a Demarcated Wine region in the north of Italy, a DOCG to be exact. Very intrigued I asked a few more questions to my fellow taster and quickly realized that my fellow taster thought Barolo was a grape. Soooo, I brought up some wines that I like to serve to “impress” someone. “Those sound great!” was my fellow taster's response, after realizing that the “bold” statement was not a good one. It was a great conversation, cordial and fun, that ended with a little more knowledge about “bold” wine statements.The second was from an employee. I will preface this with: The rest of the staff is above and beyond in wine knowledge and recommendations. So a bad apple can really be an issue. Also, people do make mistakes and misspeak. Sadly that was not the case with this individual, not the first, or third misspeak that I have witnessed. I asked about the percentage of Cabernet Sauvignon in our Crowd Favorite from tonight. The accepted rule (law in some areas) is that if it has 75% or more of a grape varietal, then the wine maker does not have to put the other varietals on the bottle. A fellow taster on the same wine asked why I asked that. I explained the above information when the employee who poured the wine jumped in very “correctively” and said “No no, it’s 70%.” Well I took several steps back to enjoy the wine and pulled up the California Wine rules and after a few minutes went to the side and showed him. He was a little dismissive but more importantly I showed my fellow taster. Misinformation can really throw off folks sorting through the huge world of wine.So, two Crowd Favorites tonight. Twin Vines Vinho Verde 2020 from Portugal, and Caparzo Sangiovese Toscana 2019 from Italy. Tasting notes? They were good.

Lunch at my cousin’s restaurant in Portugal!

After a three year hiatus due to Covid we have finally made it back to Portugal to see my mom’s family and check on our grapes in the Douro. We will be heading to Lisbon for the weekend, then to Porto for some wine, and back up into the Alto Douro. Lots of wine and food adventures coming up!

Wine Trip to Portugal and Spain

The picture is a tile a-fixed to the entrance of my cousin's small vineyard near the Douro River in Portugal. We will be heading to Madrid, up to the Ribera del Deuro and Toro wine regions of Spain, and then cross the border into Portugal to visit my family in the Tras Os Montes and Douro DOC wine regions. Stay tuned for news on how our grapes are doing and what wines we find after a long absence from covid. There are a lot of fun wine events coming later in July, so be sure to head out and enjoy them!