A Year of Wine by Tyler Colman

A Year of Wine by Tyler Colman

Author:Tyler Colman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2008-07-15T00:00:00+00:00


Travel to: Douro, Portugal— Blending Grapes and Charm in the New Douro

If you saw a chain of six men bobbing up and down, arms interlocked over each other’s shoulders, singing, wearing short-shorts, and with legs stained red from grapes crushed beneath their feet, where would you be? The only surefire answer would be Portugal, in the Douro region, and this is the perfect place for wine lovers who are interested in beating the early summer heat by visiting in May.

The heart of this area is the Douro River, which meanders for some six hundred miles across Spain and Portugal before dumping into the Atlantic Ocean at the city of Porto. While the houses that store port, that sweet, ruby to tawny nectar, are in the city, the vineyards that grow the grapes are up river, in a quasi-hinterland by the Spanish border. The region is a must visit for the curious wine enthusiast, with its beautiful vistas, compelling wines, and great food.

The Upper Douro was for many decades a backward part of a backward country. Many winemaking facilities in the region ran on generators as late as the 1980s because consistent power was not available. Dams provided electricity and turned the rushing, narrow river into a languid, wide one. Be sure to take a boat ride up the twisting and turning river—it will help you to avoid some of the small roads, which often provide great vistas, but are far from straight. And if you think the roads are treacherous, don’t even try driving in the vineyards. On a recent trip one winemaker gave me a ride to the top of his vineyard in an old jeep. He floored it hard up the loose, dry dirt of the hill, and I was thrown toward the back of the vehicle due to the acceleration and the steep grade. On the corners, I thought we would roll over. Fortunately, we made it to the top unscathed, but it was a ride I’ll never forget.

The wines are unforgettable as well. As with so many wine regions in the world, a qualitative revolution is underway. But instead of exchanging quantity for quality as is the usual story, the Douro’s change is from sweet to dry. For three centuries or more, the grapes of the Douro have gone into port, a sweet fortified wine (see January for more information on port). But port wine is no longer as in demand as it was back in the eighteenth century. The market for port is declining while the market for dry table wines is growing in countries like the U.K. and the U.S. Grape growers and port winemakers have seen the market shift and have started to adjust accordingly. The resulting table wines are often rich and concentrated reds that avoid the global trap of simply being replicas of the world’s great wines, thanks to the vineyards, which have a seductive, lush quality to them but also a local distinctiveness, because of the arid growing area and the distinctive local grapes.



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