August 30th – today I’d like to propose a toast to the memory of my step-father, Frederick Reginald Vandyke III, who lost his brave battle to prostate cancer precisely 1 year ago today, 87 years to the day after his birth 30th August 1920, in Calcutta, India.
In 1961, Fred made his first trip to Portugal [...]

This next post is an entry sent in from our Montreal based agent, Maxime Balthazard, of Vins Balthazard. We started to export to Quebec in 2002, and sales have steadily built up over the years, bringing Quebec into the strong position of No. 1 among our export markets.
“Philippe Lapeyrie, this kid of the wine world [...]

Eventually, I dove into the blogosphere. I knew of the concept for quite some time, but was hesitant of its reputation as a place where people save their diary pages in order to put their entire life online and then complain about the lack of privacy, or the journalist who proves that they can write [...]

Life is a chain of events. I guess my first one was to be born. And Castro Verde was my cradle. Barely skin and bones, no one was giving me more than a week or two to survive, but guess what where I am now, 43 years later writing about it!
I had an ordinary [...]

From San Francisco to Portugal - from Portugal to San Francisco.
There couldn’t possibly be another Portuguese winery more thrilled than we were at winning the BEST of NATION Special Award for Portugal from the San Francisco International Wine Challenge 2008. There’s a very simple reason - San Francisco is my native town, albeit I have [...]

What do you think we will be doing during the last days of August? Elementary, my dear Watson , harvesting grapes of course! A hectic, busy time, when neither winemakers nor the rest of the winery staff have time to sleep or rest! Not great timing, therefore to be participating in the first European Wine [...]