Hotel Teatro

Text José Silva

Hotel Teatro is the result of the recovery of an old building right in the Oporto city centre, neighbor of the antique Sá da Bandeira theater, still performing today. In that place started 151 years ago the Baquet theater, famous in town for decades.

The idea of the owners of this Hotel Teatro was to recreate a certain theater atmosphere, at the same time genuine but refined, where art and culture are always present. And that begins on the hotel enormous door, where you can read a poem of the great Oporto writer and poet, Almeida Garrett.

And that goes on at the reception, which represents the theater ticket office, in a symbolism where each guest buys his ticket, to access to his room and to the whole show he will attend for the entire stay. But it must be a continuous show, crossing all the décor, where brown shades prevail, rich in real theater props, from clothing to scenery pieces.

The 74 rooms are decorated in glamour, carefully equipped and where comfort is the main key.

One of the Hotel Teatro central points is the bar, which you see as soon as you go in, supported by an exterior terrace, where you can have a meal and smoke, as the hotel is entirely a non-smoking place.

In the bar, in addition to a great variety of drinks, including wine by the glass, we can enjoy small snacks and listen to good music, with videos as backdrop.

Following is the restaurant room, that early morning is used for breakfast, where you can have lunch or dinner, performing with a modern and refined kitchen service, based on quality Portuguese products and prepared by a team led by a young chef, doing a great job. Also the dinning-room team is highly professional, taking care of everything down to the last detail, including an excellent wine service.

Moreover, in the whole hotel, the customer service is very much professional, but their attention and smile make a big difference.

The Hotel Teatro has all the conditions for their guests to return home completely satisfied, after watching the play that was their stay there.
And come back soon!…

Contacts
Hotel Teatro
Rua Sá da Bandeira 84, 4000-427 Porto Portugal
telf. +351 220 409 620 fax +351 220 409 629
E-mail: geral@hotelteatro.pt
Website: www.hotelteatro.pt

Tawny à la Ramos Pinto

Text Ilkka Sirén

Anyone who has visited the Douro Valley knows that driving there can be quite exciting, and by exciting I mean downright scary. But traveling in the valley, going up and down the hills and visiting vineyards is the best way to learn about the brutal hard work that goes into cultivating vines there. It’s easily one of the most beautiful wine regions in the world but at the same time one of the most labor intensive when it comes to actually making some vinho.

I was in a car going from the Vinho Verde Region towards the Cima Corgo to visit Quinta do Bom Retiro, an estate that belongs to Ramos Pinto. Instead of taking the path we came, and knew, we took a more “direct” route. Which turned out to take much longer. You’d think Portuguese of all people would know how to navigate (shout out to Ferdinan Magellan). Anyhow, when we finally arrived we were greeted by João Nicolau de Almeida, one of the great pioneers of port wine. His studies on the Douro grape varieties and planting methods, not to mention decades of wine making, have had a significant impact on the port wine scene. I was curious to meet him and get to know Ramos Pinto a bit better. Ramos Pinto was one of my first connections with port wine, ever since my wife brought home one of their semi-erotic posters. “Alegria” I believe it was called. And when your wife brings home a poster with naked women drinking port, you can’t say no, right? At the Quinta do Bom Retiro we quickly cleansed our palates with Champagne and continued with an interesting tasting with João and his cousin Ana Rosas who is a winemaker at Ramos Pinto. The subject for the evening: tawny port. On the table were their 10, 20 and 30-year-old tawnies with some cask samples that would go into making these wines. Enough to make my mouth water.

I think tawny ports are way too often overlooked. Many seem to be fixated on vintage ports and tawnies are somehow automatically considered as lesser wines. But I think if people would know what it really takes to make a great tawny port they might feel different. Take the 30-year-old tawny for example: we tasted cask samples dating back to 1909 and it’s wines like these that play a role in the final blend. Just the fact that you have been able to keep a wine for a century is nothing short of amazing, and to use that wine all these years later to make one kickass tawny port is pretty cool. It’s like the winemaker travels back in time to pick a certain wine that will balance the blend with its own unique character and make it perfect. “Vintage is a wine, tawny is a port wine”, João says and smiles. Don’t know about that but it certainly is the mother of all blends.

Consider this: the grapes come from Douro, OK. But here’s where it starts to get a bit complex. The grapes are usually sourced from several different vineyards that vary in size, location, soil, altitude, age, planting and farming methods, etc. Oh, and did I mention that the vineyards are planted with mixed varieties? That means there’s a bunch (many times an unknown amount) of indigenous varieties in one vineyard with different flavour profiles and ripening process. The grapes are then harvested, probably plot by plot and the harvest date obviously changes for each vineyard every year. Then the grapes are processed and vinified at the winery with different methods: from old school lagares to more modern stainless steel vats.

When you make a tawny blend and use wines that are 100-year-old you can be sure that the way of making wine has evolved through the years, although the fundamentals are pretty much the same. A hundred years ago temperature control was not what it is today. Then the wine will mature in wood that vary in type, size and origin. Over-oaked wines are terrible but it’s all about balance. Tawnies are heavily influenced by the barrel aging but the marriage between the wine and wood is usually well balanced. Now, the wine can stay in the barrels for any number of years as a vintage dated wine or it can be blended somewhere along the way. The final tawny doesn’t necessarily consist only of single harvest wines (colheitas), but can also have different batches of already blended wines. So, a tawny port is literally a blend of blends. In the end it’s the winemaker and/or master blender that takes all of these components, put them together and create the ultimate blend. It’s an interesting and powerful position to be in. Like making the Mona Lisa from a big puzzle of smaller paintings. That is the art of blending. This was a simple version, in reality it’s even more complex. It’s this kind of passion and craftsmanship that makes the port wines so great.

Here are some of the cask samples we tasted:

40-year-old: dried fruits with a distinct spiciness and a touch of vanilla, has a bit of that volatile nail polish remover aroma, elegant and extremely drinkable.

60-year-old: a big handful of caramel and nutty aromas, concentrated with lots of power but a nice acidity to balance it out.

1924: quite dense structure, sweet peppery notes with burnt sugar and hints of “come to mama!”. An outstanding wine with some serious sex appeal. Wow!

1909: a very inviting nose, almost perfume-like, reminds me of this sticky lollipop candy I used have when I was a kid. Beautiful aromas but lacking a bit of structure, but since it’s going to a blend it can get that extra kick of acidity from some other wine. There’s also this curious flour dough aroma coming through.

100-year-old: there’s a dessert in Portugal called “drunken pears”, pears soaked in brandy, this sort of reminds me of that. Maple syrup with a dash of cognac-like swag. The acidity is like a rusty chain saw in your mouth. Love it.

Contacts
Ramos Pinto Portugal
Av. Ramos Pinto, 380
4400-266 Vila Nova de Gaia
Portugal
Tel: (+351) 223 707 000
Fax: (+351) 223 775 099
E-Mail: ramospinto@ramospinto.pt
Website: www.ramospinto.pt

M.O.B.

Text Ilkka Sirén

I remember having a late dinner in the Douro valley at Quinta do Vale Meão last year during harvest when Xito first told me about this MOB project with a boyish grin. He assured me that it had nothing to do with the Portuguese mafia. I wasn’t entirely convinced. But what does MOB mean then?

I’m tempted to offer Tupac Shakur’s version but something tells me I shouldn’t. In this case MOB stands for Moreira Olazabal Borges and it’s the new Dão joint venture of winemakers Jorge Moreira (Poeira), Francisco “Xito” Olazabal (Quinta do Vale Meão) and Jorge Serôdio Borges (Wine & Soul). These three well established winemakers are all based in the Douro Valley but have joined forces to produce a wine in the Dão wine region.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. These guys are just going make another Douro-style wine in Dão and it will all end in tears. Not quite. This wine clique has great knowledge about the different wine regions in Portugal, so it’s not like they don’t know Dão. In fact, the idea with this project is to produce wines with a pure Dão identity which usually means delicate fruit and more acidity driven wines. The MOB gang leased a vineyard Quinta de Corujão in 2010 from the eastern part of Dão close to Serra de Estrela, the highest mountain range in Continental Portugal.

This vineyard lies 500m above sea level and I can assure you it gets quite cold in there. It is not the hot surfing paradise that you often see in the Portuguese postcards, it’s something quite different. It’s even quite different from Douro which is not that far away and the wines are consequently totally different animals.

Joint ventures have always been a bit of question mark for me. Maybe it’s the lack of personal commitment, too many compromises and big egos or because they are made just for publicity, money and world domination but in many cases these sort of wines just do not deliver. And usually you end up paying more for these wines too. But sometimes, not very often, you really get the best of both worlds or in this case best of three worlds.

M.O.B. White 2012
Dão

Before I start raving about this wine I should say that I really enjoyed the color used on the capsule. I don’t usually pay too much attention to capsules and such but I just liked it. Maybe I’m getting soft?

This wine is a blend of Encruzado and Bical, both great examples of the vast richness of grapes in Portugal. The viscosity combined with some light “saltiness” and crisp acidity makes the whole experience quite mouth-watering. A bit of a character already and with some time it might develop into a proper go-go juice. I have to say that this wine made me very happy. It’s because of wines like this the unique grape varieties of Portugal are getting the attention they deserve.

I suggest you pour an extra glass and leave it on the table for a while because this wine opens up and develops some interesting riesling-like aromas. Tasty stuff!

M.O.B. Red 2011
Dão

The grapes include an intriguing blend of varities: Touriga Nacional, Jaen (Mencia), Alfrocheiro and Baga. Ripe strawberry, Pepsi cola and dill which I usually associate with Jaen. Seems a bit more focused on the palate. Nice spicy finish. A tad disjointed but a good wine that doesn’t put up much of a fight going down the throat. This wine actually reminds me of one of those flash mob dance things that you see on YouTube. All the grapes came together, they knew more or less how the boogie were supposed to go down but it’s a bit awkward and not perfectly synchronized. But who cares it’s a flash mob so everyone puts on a show and in the end everybody has a good time. And who knows, with some years practicing their moves in the bottle these grape varieties can come together and perform a world-class Gangnam Style instead of slightly erratic Harlem Shake.

Contacts

Jorge Moreira / Francisco Olazabal / Jorge Seródio Borges
EN 17 27, 27, 6290-261, Rio Torto Gouveia, Guarda