My motto is “Discover the world and savor the classics.”  The catchphrase encourages consumers to explore all the wines of the world but to never forget the classics.  One cannot truly appreciate wines without having benchmarks to compare them to.  One of the most classic of these benchmarks is Port, the sweet fortified wine of the Douro (“Golden”) Valley in Portugal.  The region has been making wine since Roman times.  Its wine history is interwoven with Portugal’s illustrious past as New World explorer and global trader.  The Douro Valley’s terrain …

 
Appreciation of great wines deepens with positive memories of visiting the place of origin and soaking up the history and culture, the landscapes and most of all, tasting the food and wines at the source.  In a great wine capital like the Napa Valley, with wineries and restaurants lining its straight, flat roads, visiting the region is an easy thing to do.  In the historic city of Porto and the Douro Valley, it hasn’t been quite as convenient to get the full experience; after all, the majority of quintas and …

Authentic Madeira from Portugal is one of the great fortified sweet wines in the world.  Madeira’s unique character has its origins as a wine made to travel, given the island’s location in the path of trans-Atlantic trade between the Americas, Europe and the Indies beginning in the 15th century.  It was the long sea voyage that necessitated the fortification of the still wines with brandy or rum to keep the wines in good condition.  During the 17th century when the Indies was Madeira’s major market, Portuguese producers discovered the exquisite evolution of wines stored in the hot holds of …

One of the producers that impressed me at a recent Madeira tasting in San Francisco was Vinhos Barbeito.  Achieving quality in fortified sweet wines is not so easy.  If one doesn’t have fine balance of the alcohol, acidity and sweetness, the wine will taste “hot”, cloying or flabby.  The Barbeito wines were none of these.  I spoke with family member and winemaker Ricardo Freitas on their philosophy on quality and how they achieve it.  By European standards, Barbeito is relatively young, established only in 1946 by Ricardo’s grandfather Mario Barbeito de Vasconcelos who began by making …

Visiting Porto, Portugal, is a reminder of Portugal’s historic importance as a world trading centre for over two thousand years and its dominance in the 16th century.  The historic district is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  For wine lovers, Porto is the home of the one and only Port wine, with Vila Nova de Gaia across the Douro River being the district where most of the major Port houses cellar and age their wines.  I have stayed at the Grande Hotel in the shopping district (about a mile north from the bridge), but if you are visiting …