When you visit Alentejo’s Cortes de Cima (as I did late in 2019 on a media jaunt), you realize that their geese are more than just “a loud alarm system” (as Winemaking Director Hamilton Reis put it). Those geese also eat vineyard pests, like slugs and snails. That’s not the only traditional thing that Cortes…
Category: on the road
Alentejo Postcard, Part 3 (Herdade do Rocim Recent Releases)
According to general manager and oenologist Pedro Ribeiro, Herdade do Rocim has “probably the most expensive amphorae in the world.” Rocim sent clay from their ancient vats – a staple of aging wine in Alentejo for centuries – to a university in Montpelier for analysis, in order to create newer amphorae that had the same…
Alentejo Postcard, Part 2 (Herdade de Coelheiros Recent Releases)
Among the 800 hectares of property upon which Alentejo’s Herdade de Coelheiros grows walnuts and cork trees sits about 50 hectares of vines. Though their history date back to the mid-1400s (as a hunting estate), those vines that source Coelheiros’ modern wines were replanted over 500 years later, in 1981. That’s because under Portugal’s dictatorship,…
Alentejo Postcard, Part 1 (Cartuxa Recent Releases)
Portugal’s Cartuxa is fairly well-known for being one of two wineries run by a wide-ranging non-profit foundation (focusing on developing the Évora region culturally). It’s equally well-known for being named after a monastery and having roots going back to 15th Century Jesuit monks, and still employing amphora from the 1800s. But Cartuxa is most famous…