Quinta do Pôpa Homenagem 2009 to Drink and Square

Text João Barbosa | Translation Bruno Ferreira

Looking back, 20 years or so, upon entering the former European Economic Community (1986), which had a great impact on Portugal, our country has changed. On so many levels, it’s like it’s two different countries.

Twenty five years ago there were no private television channels or McDonald’s restaurants – I recall, back in 1991, of teenage girls gathering around the first «Mac», excited with all the objects collected there, such as straws, glasses, etc. Back then, the clothing brands, a normal thing in Europe, conferred some status – nowadays sounds ridiculous.

Festival da Canção, Eurovision Song Contest and Christmas at the Hospitals were big happenings. The first two, due to being broadcast at night, used to gather the «whole» country and were subject of discussion in the following days. The other one, which could last endless hours, had retired people and hospital patients as spectators.

The country was perhaps naive, with so much modern things to learn. Surely, some good things got lost, but some unfortunate ones too. Just like everything. To me, twenty five years ago was when I began my craft, in Diário Económico, organ of which I may have been the youngest writer ever.

Back then, we drank more wine and the «older ones» drank the «house’s». There were barrels and taverns. In the early 90’s a Douro wine started to get hugely noticed – I think it was because of an award – and became coveted, pricier. Because of pioneering many still hold the brand as the highest comparison reference:  Cabeça de Burro, of Caves de Vale do Rodo. Not the same anymore, like the €7.5 retail selling price shows.

From 8 to 8000. The number of farmers diminished but the bottling producers’ number has increased. Cool! But there are so many, many, many, that it’s impossible to know them all, let alone taste all their nectars. And they keep increasing, the source seems inexhaustible.

For several reasons some recent producers are starting to get noticed. One of those reasons – the main one or the one that should matter the most – is the quality of the product released to the market. It’s not enough. You got to be careful with the brand’s designation, the label’s appearance and understand that you’re surfing through a crowd. Nowadays, more and more winegrowers are making use of communication professionals and, therefore, specialized agencies illuminate their clients.

However, it all goes back to the starting point: quality. Still young, Quinta do Pôpa is an asset to oenophiles. Young and dynamic people that are deservedly earning their spot in the news and articles – and here I am joining the party. Professionalism is focused on the fundamental: quality and «honesty».

This honesty that I talk about is the ability to transmit nature to the final product. True wine, without masks or tricks. Quinta do Pôpa makes Quinta do Pôpa wine. The care and rigor have an added source: the knowledge and art of Luis Pato, one of the men daring to affirm and make excellent wines with the complicated grape variety baga, from Bairrada.

Francisco Ferreira, known as «Zeca do Pôpa», tried hard and was able to save enough to buy a quinta in Douro, in 2003. Located in Adorigo, Tabuaço municipality, Quinta do Vidiedo (14 hectares) was renamed, in 2008, Quinta do Pôpa. The grandsons wanted to honor their grandfather and fulfill his dream of making wine.

The first harvest was in 2007. This year, Vanessa Ferreira and Stéphane Ferreira, «Pôpa»’s grandsons, released Quinta do Pôpa Homenagem 2009.

A blend of vinhas velhas (40%) and individual plots of tinta roriz (35%) and touriga nacional (25%). Separated fermentations in small stainless lagares, long macerations, foot treaded. The wine was directly transferred to French oak casks – 40% new and 60% of 2nd and 3rd years.

It’s painful for me to write about evocations, for fear of being dowdy or unpleasant. I’ll end asserting that the tribute was well-achieved. Honor for quality and respect for its land and grapes.

Contacts
Quinta do Pôpa, Lda.
E.N. 222 – Adorigo
5120-011 Tabuaço
Portugal
Email: geral@quintadopopa.com
Mobile: (+351) 915 678 498
Site: www.quintadopopa.com

The Best Wine

Text João Barbosa | Translation Bruno Ferreira

The world’s best wine is portuguese, from my region, from my municipality, from my civil parish, from my village, and by chance, happens to be mine. This thought is shared, in general or in most part, by many portuguese.

Obviously, there’s no such thing as «world’s best wine». Localism is something very portuguese and, when not rude, it pleases me because it generates discussion and information exchange between the divergent. I like the spirit (if healthy) of family, clan, tribe.

I think it’s unanimous that Portuguese wine has never been as good as it is nowadays. However, there always has been wines of excellence. Before oenologists existed, divine nectars were already being manufactured. Nature’s merit, surely, but mostly producer’s.

The ancients were not stupid. They knew what they were doing and, surely, knew things that are presently unknown to many experienced professionals and services.

I’ll give an example unrelated to wine. A friend had, at a given time, a workshop of silver, for antiques restoring and reproductions of quality. He hired a group of goldsmiths of renowned quality and name. But, when the work piece had its origins from remoter times than XVIII century (inclusive), they didn’t always knew what to do.

Some evils of this country are the lack of archives, by sloppiness, earthquakes, seaquakes, fires and war pillages. Beholding the despair and the craftsmen’s will to give up, my friend mustered the team and declared:

– Dear friends, the ancient were not stupid, as we’re not stupider than them. If «these» things were done it’s because it was possible to do them. If it’s possible to do them, we’ll do them. There’s no other choice.

He searched and found bibliography and information sources. Studied the pieces. The officers and masters read, digested and, after a while, they were working on reproductions or artefacts’ restoration whose technical knowledge had been lost.

Pomegranates engraft in orange trees, with benefits, though the reverse isn’t possible – nor doable. It’s strange, because they’re not from the same family. I don’t know a single agronomist who can explain it.

The ancients knew, empirically, that, growing vegetables near vineyards had benefits, aside of being a food supply. That apple trees (Colares) counterbalance the wear caused by the vineyards, believing in what a man from the region told me.

 

I hope I never lose this continuous dazzle I have over the wine things and the tilling – of nature and man. Madeira wine is wonder (without the article, as the medievals would put it) to see, when knowing its sufferings.

My 45 years of existence allowed me to «see» a bunch of undrinkable new and old wines, but also pearls. Today, with all the knowledge and qualified manpower it’s easy to find a good wine. Something that wasn’t true, that’s why I delight myself with archaeology and/or museology oenological pieces.

I know I’ll be buffeted for only naming some and those more recently revealed, but here goes: the Taylor’s Scion, the Taylor’s Single Harvest 1863 or the Moscatel de Setúbal Superior 1911 are colossuses. Sogrape is about to celebrate Sandeman’s 225 years, so hopefully there’s another great wine on the way, in the line of Kopke 375 which marked the house’s anniversary.

The life of these wines, all fortified, is naturally longer. However, among the «normal» there’s, for exemple, excellents Bairrada, Dão and even Alentejo…

Back to the beginning, to the love to the land, which blurs logic and common sense; an alentejano producer released, one year ago (two or three) a fortified that aged 8 years in barrels. The launching price rivaled with the Porto wine 20 years.

Alentejo is Douro – in the excellence conditions for this genre as in the percepted consistent quality. The price of the fuggy alentejano was presposterous. That I know of, it sold out. To whom? To those who believe that the wine from their region is Portugal’s best, perhaps the world’s.

Few certainties and many more doubts

Text João Barbosa | Translation Bruno Ferreira

Says a friend that traditions are meant to be broken. Good truths and laments fit this provocation. No more “burning the wicked”, like no one knows how to manufacture clay jars for Alentejo’s wine making anymore – loss of historical and anthropological knowledge.

This traditions’ thing is like tastes. Tastes are and should be discussed; what’s not arguable is the entitlement to opposition and the respect it demands. As for wine, and other food, a designation of origin should be more than a geographical indication. Of all the factors, I address the main one: variety.

The variety and its links to the land are the heritage and patrimony transmitted into upcoming generations. However, they should also be a boundary to the imagination, taste, etc. If a winegrower wants to make blue when the tradition is green, he should be free to do so. What’s not correct is calling green, something that’s blue.

The issue is on the label, on the territorial word, and the grape that is its emblem. A designation of origin wine is neither better nor worse than a regional wine; two different things that should stay that way.

Discussing Bairrada’s varieties is a tradition. As for me, in this toponym the cabernet sauvignon, merlot, chardonnay, etc, do not fit. The same way that it’s not limited by baga and maria gomes.

It’s true, that on that region, the presence of foreign varieties isn’t exactly recent. After how long can a variety be considered “authentic”: ten years, 20, 30, 100?

I recognize some xenophobia. All the more so that foreign varieties exist in Portugal for centuries, such as malvasia or moscatel de alexandria. Those are portuguese, but what to say about alicante bouschet that found its habitat in Alentejo?

There’s yet another issue, the internal transhumance. Touriga nacional has as much of alentejana as the syrah has. I’ll underline the the alvarinho variety here; shared by minhotos and galician. Discovered as a great variety, now coveted elsewhere.

At first some provincialism reigned, concerning the permission of Vinhos Verdes’s region labels usage, other than the sub-regions Monção and Melgaço. There could be alvarinho on an alentejano label but not on a Ponte de Lima one. On January 13th a suitable and felicitous agreement was reached. Everyone can now use the variety’s name, but the Monção and Melgaço sub-region sees its specialty recognized, through an exclusive warranty seal.

To the authenticity issue I’ll add the oenological factors … with the standardization of processes, will not Regional Alentejano, Regional Tejo, Dão or Douro, look alike each other? Doesn’t technology fades away territory and variety?

Because of the eagerness to differentiate, things like what happened in Beira, happen. I don’t get the map. The problem is not the excess of designations of origin but places with no added-value or specialization, «nonexistent places».

The consumer doesn’t understand that. What the consumer can understand is scales. There should be a classification table: First Class, Second Class, etc. Here I am complicating what’s already complicated enough as it is – many might say. Complicated is to keep messing up toponymy and treat as equal what’s different by nature.

What does a foreign consumer think when he sees a Douro with a pricetag of €3 and another with €80? Expensive isn’t better, known fact. Isn’t it clearer to assume the difference/specification of terroir?

Explaining to a foreigner that Portugal exists and produces wines for millenniums is a hard task experienced by many. Putting differentiation in a variety – that could be grown even in Mars – is preferable to the truth?! That we make blends? The task of explaining that touriga nacional and blend are not the same? Better sooner than having to later that Santa isn’t real.

I don’t consider myself illiterate, therefore I choose the uncertainty principle. I have a preference, I am not peremptory. In 300 years won’t the merlot – by my arguments – be as bairradina as baga? Beaten but not convinced! By passion and little logic.

The terroir and the environment

Text João Barbosa | Translation Bruno Ferreira

A weird thing about the word terroir is that it’s probably only known by wine folks. I’ve been hearing faux pas after slip-up regarding the meaning of this French word that has no translation to other languages – an affirmation that lacks exhaustive research on my part.

Terroir connotes an almost magical dimension, anthropological and loveable even. As for me, it means ground, underground (or as far as the roots reach), ecosystem of proximity, natural environment (life and non-life) that the wind carries, climatic conditions, appropriate variety, agricultural knowledge and human intervention on the field. Beautiful but that can be ruined by “violent” handling in wineries.

No winegrower bad-mouths his own wine and there are “thousands” who claim their estates have an unique terroir. Changing a comma doesn’t necessarily change a text. The terroir minutiae comes from Burgundy, a place where micro regions exist. La Tâche, slightly over six hectares is an example. Ranging between 6 to 540 hectares, we can find all kinds of terroir concepts. So far so good, the complication arises when we talk about how to till the land.

First of all: a land portion where the vineyard is watered is part of the terroir? Those who water say it is, the ones who don’t claim it’s not, because it shows the vines are not comfortably settled – like they don’t belong there.

Secondly: vines treated with herbicides, fungicides and synthesis pesticides have the right to be a terroir? However natural, the addition of bordelaise syrup does not naturally fit the land, furthermore the copper is toxic.

Thirdly: trimming the weeds is consentaneous with nature? The plantation – ancestral and nowadays recognized -, between the lines, of azote’s fixating plants is consentaneous?

Fourthly: if the wine is an “intelligent agriculture” product, to deny/minimize the human intervention doesn’t diverge from the tillage’s essence?

Domaine de La Romanné-Conti, in Burgundy, adopted years ago the organic farming practice, then the biodynamics and nowadays the tilling is done with animal traction. Overdo or marketing?

Biodynamics is a radical organic farming model – I assume the adjective as a noun – which stands for minimal intervention, certified by a private and inflexible organization: Demeter. The movement was started by Rudolf Steiner, who introduced it in 1924. Honestly, I don’t know why the hell the Nazis had to pick on philosophy.

Bidyanmics gathers four ancestral contributions such as lunar cycles or the 12 signs zodiac astrology. To me it’s mysticism because they are in fact 13. But 12 is a magical number formed by other transcending numbers such as 3 and 4.

So that you have a notion of the radicalism: an estate with about 500 hectares was nearly discarded, just because a hole in the ground was mended with brick pieces. It was complicated to make them believe that bricks are made of clay. Biodynamics is a freedom of choice and no harm comes to the world.

To finish off I’ll tell you what I heard about a Burgundy producer. He says the variety only expresses itself during the first years. Upon reaching maturity, the plant expresses its terroir.

To water or not to water? Specific variety or not? Tillage in between the lines, or not to? Trimming the weeds or not to? To use animal traction or not to? To use synthesized products or not to? Each and every one has its own terroir concept and good tillage practice.

Whether skeptical or believer of some of the given facts, what I know is that great wines exist where organic farming is not practiced and neither is biodynamics, also watering is done.

Barbarous is the Ostrogoths King

Text João Barbosa | Translation Bruno Ferreira

Some years ago I realized, through a Portuguese wine magazine article that the old regime – a system that prevailed in Europe since the end of the XVI century until the French Revolution – after all still exists.

If I was a politics columnist, that kind of Excellence would be ripped apart, all the way from Left to Right, including the monarchs (I believe there are 3 Absolutisms’ apologists). This nobleman from the Royal Wine House, Spanish by birth, claimed that there is a nobility among connoisseurs.

A nobility consisting of people who even though seduced by the alcohol effects do not get drunk; barbarians’ things, of ignorants, savages… I’m not overreacting, these were basically the terms used.

The herald of the wine king who to me is the jester. Because he doesn’t know anything about history or anthropology or even thinks about the lines he writes. After the barbarians, the scribbler even added a level of non-conscious oenophiles. There’s the people, bourgeoisie and nobility. The clergy was not included, either that or the jester is also cardinal.

I’m not advocating to drink incommensurably or in a way that might cause trouble. For centuries, more like millennia, alcohol was something more than pleasure. The wine was a source of calories, healthy beverage (drinking water, mostly in towns was hazardous to health due to pollution) and also a pleasure source.

Fortunately, the times have changed. A documentary directed by António Barreto (a sociologist) shows that in 1979 there were children in Fonte da Telha – in the nearby of Almada and Sesimbra – whose diets included sopas-de-cavalo-cansado. This serious fact shows us the misery lived until the Democracy establishment as well as the way wine was seen in the everyday life.

Alcoholism, be it based on wine or another product, is not desirable in any aspect. However, there’s a difference between alcoholism, intoxication and getting drunk at a party. If wine – alcohol – has reached the present day is, in huge part, thanks to its “magical” use, inducer of an altered conscious state.

And, aside from alcoholism, intoxication and binge drinking there’s civility, a noun that has as much of drunken as of sober. Who wants to party limitless has the right to do so. But I have to criticize if you’re going to handle machinery in that state, putting your own life and others’ at risk.

Moreover, alcohol people – those who have it culturally implemented – know more or less how to handle the situation which does not mean the absence of problems at all. National Geographic Channel transmitted a series of documentaries based on the addictions and places where toxic creates hazards to public health. Among the situations (repeated) such as crack, cocaine, horse painkillers (!!!), alcohol also made its appearance – one single time.

Not all Amerindian societies (probably the majority) were familiar with alcohol upon the Europeans arrival. In some regions their defenses are still fragile nowadays. In some remote areas in Alaska, alcohol (distilled) is compared to heroin’s plague – like the one lived in Portugal’s 90s. In Anchorage, a whiskey bottle is worth ten times more in isolated areas.

Moderation should be mandatory. Civility and consciousness on its consumption should inhibit risk situations. Exagerate once in a while is not that serious. The “blessed” of the wine surely have the same hypocrisies as the “blessed” of other moralities.