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“Do not be angry with the rain; it simply does not know how to fall upwards.”
That’s what Vladimir Nabokov said about the rain, and it should be also the way we feel. But it is not easy just to be indifferent. After so many weeks praying for a good week-end of rain some weeks...
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2013 Harvest in the Douro – all about to finish
Time doesn’t stop and we are slowly approaching the end of the harvest. Contrary to the norm, this year it rained during the picking and this fact played a very important role in the overall quality of...
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Quevedo 2011 Vintage Port – Wine Spectator review
Few weeks before staring the harvest back in 2011 we were quite confident that the grapes were in very good conditions to make something good. Then, when the grapes were already at the winery and...
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Quevedo 1996 Colheita wins gold medal at the Mundus Vini and Palate Press Awards
First let me say that we don’t like to brag, but our Quevedo 1996 Colheita has been popular on the wine competitions, being awarded both in Europe and in the US. Thus, we thought we should share this...
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Opening a bottle of Port with Port tongs
Wine geeks like rituals. We care about which glasses to use, which way to pass the bottle, decanting time or serving temperatures. We take these “necessary” steps to fully enjoy a bottle of wine on...
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Press clipping and a farewell to 2013
As the year is about to finish, we thought that could be fun to share with you what has been said recently on the press about our Ports and wines. We tried to combine in this press clipping one quote...
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Wine and Cork – why do they need each other so bad
Cork plays a critical role in the wine business. It has historically been the most used closure and nowadays it closes around 70% of all the wine bottles in the world. However, in the last decades both...
View ArticleHarvest 2014: first maturity control
Every year, on the 10th of August, we embark on our very first maturity (ripeness) control in our main vineyard, Quinta Vale d’Agodinho. Located on the very top of a hill with 360 degrees of sun...
View ArticleLate rain may spoil a great harvest in the Douro
With the harvest being halfway over, let’s do a quick and dirty assessment of what’s occurred. Surprisingly, we’ve had a deluge of rain hitting us off and on for approximately two weeks. The good news...
View ArticleHow to filter out wine sediment?
Several years ago, I heard a fantastic story about an old English woman who used to buy old bottles of vintage Port for her own consumption. But rather than drinking the wine, while reading her book or...
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Summer Salad Recipe
Summer is definitively at our door. We thought it would be a good timing to share with you a fresh salad recipe to pair with our whites. INGREDIENTS (for 6 servings): For the SALAD: -1 chayote(Chuchu...
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Proper Glass for Port
We are often asked what is a good glass to drink Port from. Here are a few tips to choose the perfect glass. Port wine should be considered more like wine, less like a spirit. You want a glass with a...
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Moon and Wine, Myth or Reality!?!
Even when we do not see it, it is somewhere up there and its gravity, as we all know, creates the tides on our blue planet. The Moon, the lonely satellite of planet Earth has always been captivating...
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To Blend or not to Blend, that is the Question!
As far as we remember, the Douro has always been a land where we were blending grapes. Blending in the vineyards, blending in the stone lagares, blending in the cellar and blending before bottling!...
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Aging wine-In Vino Veritas
Today I want to discuss wine aging. How can we tell if a wine will age well or not? As passionate wine lovers, we dream of that moment where we put our lips in a cup of wine that is older than us....
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Which tools to open a bottle of wine?
Here are some tools you can use to open your wine/Port bottles. Which one do you prefer? -The 2 step corkscrew is definitively the most versatile and easy tool to use. With older wines, it can be...
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6 Tricks to preserve your wine once it is opened.
When you have a nice dinner at home with friends and family, you will probably end up drinking all the bottles of wines you are opening. In other moments, for example when you feel like having just a...
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Our Journey Into Organic
Our journey into Organic practices in our farms and vineyards started in 2005 when my father started growing 20 hectares of olive trees to make organic olive oil in Valongo dos Azeites, his mother’s...
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The soil of the Douro, lost in translation. Is there really schist in the...
In Portuguese, the soil of the Douro is named ‘’xisto’’. If you look on google translate you’ll see that xisto’s first result will be schist which is also the closest phonetically. But if you also look...
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The influence of the Marão on the Douro Valley climate
100km East of Porto city, the Serra do Marão surrounds the Douro River, giving birth to the Douro Valley as the river carved its path through it. Its highest peak is standing over 1400 meters. The...
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