Cortes de Cima in the Douro – ‘adventure’ not a ‘venture’!

The Alentejo is heading north. João Portugal Ramos and Jose Maria Soares Franco have joined forces in Duorum.  More recently Herdade do Esporão has started a new project – Quinta dos Murças.  However, recent sightings of Cortes de Cima in the Douro last week, have instigated rumours of another new Alentejan-Dourense venture – false rumours indeed, as our trip was purely a personal odyssey! Since arriving in Portugal in 1987, visiting the Douro is something we do regularly – every 10 years!

Our first sojourn onto Portuguese soil was during the stormy fall of 1987 when the inclement weather forced our sailboat Gazelle la Goelette to seek harbour in Matosinhos, and while waiting for the storm to pass we drove up to Pinhão to search for a relative  Raymond Reynolds, at the time a winemaker at Taylors. Memorable vignettes from that visit was Hans waterskiing on the Douro River from Taylor’s Quinta de Vargellas halfway to Spain, and an impromptu lunch with Bruce Guimaraens in Pinhão, at the current location of the Vintage House Hotel.

Spool forward to Ano 1997 and our next Douro visit, this time not by sailing boat but by Hymermobile with 2 toddlers in tow, when we improvised a campground at the riverside train station at the foot of Quinta do Crasto. The next morning we were rewarded by sunrise on the Douro and a morning swim in the river. On that trip we were warmly received by the Bergqvists at Q. de la Rosa and Dominique Morris at Crasto.

Another decade has passed, and our next Douro visit was overdue, this time to what Jamie Goode calls the ‘Douro Wine Revolution ‘ or the ‘New Douro’. This Douro trip began for me in Lisbon with the 2nd European Wine Bloggers Conference. The conference was a lively, stimulating jam-packed gathering of 120 wine producers, communicators, educators, and wine lovers (plus a few hi-tech geeks) – AKA ‘Wine Bloggers’ from Europe, UK and America. The program consisted of wine tastings, master classes, social networking workshops, and for those who forgot to spit – nonstop merriment!

After the weekend conference finally sizzled to an end, there was a chance for a few of us Bloggers to visit the Douro at the invitation of the ‘Douro Boys‘. We traversed by bus the half of Portugal in a north-easterly direction, crossing granite studded plains and small villages nestled in the foothills of the range of Serra do Estrela to Vila Nova de Foz Côa in the Douro superior, for our 1st stop at Quinta do Vale Meão, where we were personally received on their beautiful patio by father and son Francisco Olazabal, Luisa and her mother and escorted into their private home for a sumptuous lunch and wine tasting.  As the sun was setting on the Douro river, we were packed onto a train and followed the riverbank downstream to Quinta do Crasto, for a vertical wine tasting followed by dinner with Miguel and Tomas Roquette and Pedro Almeida.

The next morning the early risers could enjoy the splendid surroundings of the Aquapura Hotel on the riverbank near Regua before heading to Quinta do Vallado, where Francisco Ferreira showed us his ambitious new winery still under construction, before a complete vertical tasting of his Reservas. Cristiano Van Zeller followed suit with a vertical tasting of his Q. do Vale D. Maria while entertaining the crowd with his jovial antics in confirmation of his legendary showmanship.   Lunch was across the river at Q. de Nápoles where Niepoort’s amicable winemaker Luís Seabra combined an impressive vertical winetasting of Redoma with a healthy and delicious lunch fresh from their own ‘horta’.

On behalf of my fellow Wine Bloggers I would like to thank and commend the ‘Douro Boys’ organization for their stellar reception of our group, opening wide their doors, and lavishing upon us their time, knowledge and stories, opening their best and often rarest wines and serving the finest local food. Comparing this visit to a similar Wine Bloggers Conference I attended just a few months back in California, where top wineries in Sonoma and Napa laid out their red carpet with much ado, I was glad to confirm that the hospitality shown by the Douro Boys measured up in all ways to the efforts of the Californian vintners. I do hope another 10 years won’t pass before I have the chance to experience it again!