Had a great meal last night at DOP restaurant in Porto, with some really creative riffing on a Portuguese theme from Rui Paula. We began with a fruity scallop carpaccio,…
Quinta da Romaneira Vintage Port 2015
I’ve been enjoying this wine over the last few evenings. It’s a superb expression of a very fine year in the Douro, the 2015 from Quinta da Romaneira. I have…
The wines of Luis Pato, Bairrada star
Luis Pato is perhaps the most famous face in Bairrada, even though he’s had a bit of a love-hate relationship with the regional authorities, that led him for a time…
The wines of Quinta das Bágeiras, Bairrada
Mário Sérgio’s Quinta das Bágeiras is one of the leading wineries in Bairrada. He created the domaine in 1989 from 12 hectares of vines he got from his grandfather, and…
Filipa Pato and William Wouters: groundbreaking wines from Bairrada, Portugal
Filipa Pato is the daughter of Luis Pato, and she’s been making wine for a while now under her own name. But she really found her direction when she began…
Quinta de Baixo, Bairrada, with Dirk Niepoort
Dirk Niepoort has long been interested in the terroirs of Bairrada. He thinks that the combination of the chalky clay soils and the Baga grape variety makes this potentially the…
Tasting the wines of the Buçaco Palace Hotel, one of Portugal’s treasures
The Buçaco (Bussaco) Palace Hotel is one of Portugal’s most striking bits of Neo-Manueline architecture. It’s almost impossibly ornate, with incredibly elaborate stone carvings rammed in just about everywhere. But…
Tasting the debut (2000) wines from Quinta de Chocapalha, Lisboa, Portugal
It was a real treat to try the first two wines made from this domaine. Back in 2002 I attended a dinner in the Douro at which several winemakers gathered…
Quinta do Noval Vintage Port 2015
Quinta do Noval have lately become known for what the English wine trade describe quaintly as ‘eccentric’ declarations. They released a vintage Port in 2013, for example. Now they’ve released…