HAITI
March 18th we are one of the sponsors of a photo auction, “A Picture Saves A Thousand Lives” at New York’s Milk Gallery. All of the proceeds from the auction will go to ROSE Charities, to provide long-term care and rehabilitation for the survivors of the Haitian earthquake.

BREAST CANCER AWARENESS
March 19th is the Annual fund raising lunch at the Hotel Palace in Estoril on behalf of Laço, a Portuguese association for breast cancer awareness. We will be donating wines for this event. (Laço also have a blog and facebook page, where you can become a fan!)

MADEIRAN FLOODS
Following the devastating floods in Madeira last month, we have joined forces with our distributor in Madeira, Copo and some other wineries, to donate wines to some of the worst effected restaurants and shops, who lost much including their wine stocks in the torrential floods. We are glad to be able to help our Madeirian friends in this small way.

If you are in Évora, a must see is the lovely  Hotel M’AR De AR Aqueduto. Our old friend from Beja, Chef Antonio Nobre is the chef at this hotel and their sister hotel nearby, Hotel Muralhas. A novelty in the Alentejo is the Sushi Bar, where Chef Kenzo from São Paulo demonstrates his skills in making delicious Sushi in this video, which we enjoy afterwards paired with a glass of Chaminé Branco!

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A charity auction for Haiti earthquake victims. Cortes de Cima is happy to be able to partner once again with our friends and the much respected  Rose Charities for another good cause, following the success of  BeBare, the naughtiest charity auction. Save the date! Thursday March 18th at the Milk Gallery, NY.

FOTORELIEF, an all-volunteer organization and a veteran of fundraising auctions, and A Milk Gallery Project in New York organizes “A Picture Saves A Thousand Lives” silent photo auction event to contribute to the Haitian earthquake relief effort through ROSE Charities. Over 100 of the world’s most respected fashion and fine art photographers are each donating a photograph to be exhibited and auctioned off that evening, with the opening bids ranging from $300 to $10,000. Invited guests – art patrons, collectors, celebrities, and the fashion & fine art photography world elite – will have the opportunity to take home an important work of art, while making an invaluable contribution to the relief effort. As in the earlier events, we will be donating Chaminé to be served during the evening.  All of the proceeds from the auction will go to ROSE Charities, to provide long-term care and rehabilitation for the survivors of the Haitian earthquake.

Noot Seear, international top model, actress and President of ROSE Charities US commented, “After the attention wanes and the media has decamped, there will still be years of rehabilitation and reconstruction needed for the …

Like nervous Wall Street investors, we are also watching for green shoots. However, our intense gaze is not focused on the Dow Jones ticker tape, but towards our vines.

Early March is the time of budbreak in the vineyard. 12 March, 26 February, 2 March, 14 March are dates which stand out in the record book from past bud breaks from past vintages. The earliest varieties are Alicante Bouschet and the whites, i.e. Verdelho or Viognier. We are still waiting….and watching……..and waiting for it to stop raining……

To date 1171 mm rain has fallen this winter, more than twice the average annual rainfall, with 323 mm having fallen in February alone. Damns are overflowing, rivers are swollen, fields are flooded. And still it keeps raining. Farmers are crying about their soaked wheat fields and pastures, but luckily the dormant vines don’t mind standing with their feet wet.

Vineyard work is cumbersome when the vineyard is one big muddy quagmire. Luckily we got an early start to our pruning already last December, and the last vines are now finally pruned and ready for their vinous reawakening. While we are waiting, we are treated to the sight of the fields bursting with spring wildflowers in yellow, white and violet hues.

The rules of the wine game are being rewritten. Or rather, they have been rewritten last August in Brussels (Regulations R479/2008, 555/2008, R606/2009 and R607/2009), and now it is up to each winemaking region across Europe to decide how to interpret them, and how far to adopt the new rules. In Alentejo there is a moratorium until the powers up high advise us of their final decisions, but they are likely to be as described here.

One of the major changes deals with allowing cross blending, that is allowing the addition of max.15% of wine from another region. Alentejo, in the short-sighted desire to protect our own grapegrowers, will not be adopting this new change.  Another change now allows for irrigation in the vineyard. This might be new for France, but here in dry Alentejo, we have been allowed to irrigate for years. Initially it was under the guise of ‘experimental’ irrigation, the irony being that all grapegrowers in Alentejo were ‘experimenting’ at the same time. More recently there was a general amnesty allowing irrigation, with the omniscient authorities guiding the grapegrowers when to turn on and off the taps. Luckily with the new rules, this charade no longer needs to be played, with this decision rightfully left to the grapegrower himself.

What will these new changes mean for us? Not much of anything really, unless you scrutinize the fine …