In Portuguese, the soil of the Douro is named ‘’xisto’’. If you look on google translate you’ll see that xisto’s first result will be schist which is also the closest phonetically. But if you also look for the word shale translated into Portuguese, you’ll find the answer to be xisto as well! Commonly, many articles and features talk about the most predominant element of the soil of the Valley as being schist but…
Is there really schist in the Douro? Well the answer is yes BUT very little!

Wait… what!? Yes! For so many years we’ve been promoting our unique schist soil, this information was relayed by many over the years and we’ve created this myth.

When you start digging into some reliable technical geologic sources and talking to experts in the region such as my friend Ryan Opaz, you quickly identify that the rocks you are stepping on as you walk in the vineyard are shale. Shale can come in different colors depending on the minerals in it: blue, red, yellow, brown. It is highly fragile sedimentary rocks and breaks easily in your hands.

Schist on the other hand is much harder and is easily recognizable by its highly foliated plate-shaped mineral grains that are large enough to see with our eyes. We can find some mica-schists in the Douro.

The good news is that schist and shale are from the same family of rocks called metamorphic rocks. Through high pressure and temperature, sediments are being compressed and combined with other minerals to result in different metamorphic rocks depending on the steps they went through.

Here you can find a clear path of the transition phases from shale to gneiss.

Douro soil results from a complex amalgamation of different metamorphic rocks from shale to gneiss that got shifted from its horizontal alignment to a semi vertical one. It is mostly composed of phyllite (in the lower parts) and shale (in the upper parts) residing on and surrounded by granite. We’ll also find amounts of the other rocks like slate, schists, gneiss and quartz in their singular forms but also in transition stages outcropping in small amounts to the top. Each stone’s color is the signature of its mineral composition and they vary a lot in the Douro.

Each combination of those rocks will give each vineyard or parcell a unique character. A simple example: at our quinta da Trovisca we planted some Sousão grapes in a high aluminum content shale parcell. We can clearly see that Sousão does not perform as well as our Tinta Roriz. It is hard work to understand our vineyards and adapt each variety we are planting to the mineral composition of the soil below!

This unique configuration of metamorphic rocks in the Douro is the reason why viticulture is possible in this arid location where the vine is tested to its limit. The fragile shale vertically aligned permits the strong vine roots to find its way as deep as 10 meters sometimes. The strong dew formed by the contrast of high temperatures during the day and cold nights also finds its way down the layers of shale to the roots offering some relief to the vine during high hydric stress days of the Douro’s intense summer. At the bottom, the granite base is impermeable to water and in some places, it will retain the spring rain and create reserves the vines can reach during the season.

As usual, if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to comment. I look forward to welcoming in the Douro this year, we’ll share a glass of wine or Port while contemplating our shale-filled vineyards.

Cheers,
Óscar

Our journey into Organic practices in our farms and vineyards started in 2005 when my father started growing 20 hectares of olive trees to make organic olive oil in Valongo dos Azeites, his mother’s home village. For our vineyards, we started converting them in 2013 starting with the new plantations and existing young vineyards in the heart of Quinta da Trovisca. The next vineyard to be converted was Quinta da Senhora Rosário, next to our winery, home to our oldest parcells and newly planted white grape blocks.

Going organic was an easy decision, but the actual implementation is not so simple and you have to be prepared to handle its implications. The most important one is manual labour, as it becomes significantly more intensive than in traditional methods. In our case it meant that instead of spraying once a year some chemicals to get rid of the weeds, we started to trim manually or mechanically the growing vegetation around 3 times a year.

Also, organic farming implies that there is more life growing around the vines, therefore healthy competition for the ressources occurs. The vine then produces less fruits but the quality is definitively higher.

Converting our production to organic is a progressive process in which we keep learning and improving our efficiency at farming our vineyards. So far we have converted 2 of our 5 vineyards and we keep working to diminish the impact on the rest of the states by using more sophisticated equipment that helps reduce the use of chemicals. The main difficulty we face in the Douro Valley is the vegetation control in the abrupt ramps between the terraces – Yes, those magnificent steep slopes that create the amazing World Heritage Landscape have it’s disadvantages…

Currently we are working into bringing sheeps and chickens to the vineyards which will help to maintain the weeds controlled while leaving behind first quality fertilizers! Maybe your next case of Oscar’s bio will come with cheese or eggs 🙂

Oscar

When you have a nice dinner at home with friends and family, you will probably end up drinking all the bottles of wines you are opening. In other moments, for example when you feel like having just a glass of wine for yourself while relaxing reading your book, what are your options? Recently many of you have been asking about how long you can keep a bottle of wine or Port once opened and what are the best tricks to keep it fresh for as long as possible.

So let’s begin with the basics: What happens when you open a bottle of wine or Port?
When you pop up a bottle, Oxygen – the main troublemaker- gets in contact with the wine components and triggers a chain of reactions altering its structure, its color, its aromas and its flavours.
The pace of the changes depend on many factors (which I won’t be able to cover all today) but mostly on 3 main ones:
– The temperature you are storing the wine at
– The surface of the wine in contact with oxygen and
– The time the wine has been opened.

More oxygen will dissolve into your wine at cold temperatures but the changes will happen slower, while at higher temperatures, less oxygen will dissolve in your wine but the changes will happen faster. As everything, it is a question of balance!

Today, I want to share with you the tricks I use and my experience using some tools available on the market. I suggest you find your own combination to preserve your wines depending on the conditions you have and the tools you want to use.

All those tricks are equally good for Port and for wine. Due to its higher content of sugar and alcohol, Port is more resistant than wine but I recommend you treat it like wine and not like spirit. The changes will simply happen slower with Port under the same conditions.

1-The best and easiest way to preserve your wine is to keep it in a space with as little contact with oxygen as possible and store it at cold temperature to slow down the oxidation process. If you can plan ahead, find a smaller bottle that you will fill upon opening your bottle of wine. Then keep it in the fridge until next service. You can easily keep your wine for a week like this with little impact. This is how we handle our samples at the winery using half bottles or emptied sparkling/tonic water bottles of smaller size.

2- If you plan to drink the remaining wine over the next 1-3 days. Simply put the cork back on the bottle, leave it on the counter, away from the light at room temperature (12-16C 53-60F). This is what I normally do at home, it is my sweet spot where I find the oxygen does not dissolve much into the wine and the temperature for the oxidation reactions is slow enough. This way I can also follow the evolution of the wine and it gives me an idea how it will evolve when I’ll want to open my next bottle. If you can’t get your bottle at this temperature, put it in the fridge, it is better to have your wine preserved at lower temperature than extreme temperatures, especially for summer days.

3- If you like gadgets, you can use those vacuum pumps to remove as much air and oxygen as possible from the wine bottle before putting back the cork. This will slow down the reactions and help you keep your wine as good as trick #2 but up to a week. If trick #2 fits you, you don’t really need this tool.

4- Another tool is inert gas.There are many solutions in the market but from my experience the best one is Coravin. How does it work? This gadget is applied to a closed bottle and its small needle allows you to extract the wine while replacing it with an inert gas (Argon gas), ensuring oxygen never touches the remaining wine. Once you are done, you simply remove the gadget and the cork will naturally expand again to its original shape. The cost of such a gadget is not inexpensive but it does seem to keep your wine fresher and brighter for a longer period of time. In my experience using Coravin, I felt that sometimes the wines got a bit dull and bitter. Also, when used many times on the same bottle, the cork has its limitations therefore I’ve seen many leaking.

5- Try to open your leftover bottle the fewest times possible. Anytime you open your bottle again, fresh oxygen comes in and more changes will happen. Ideally, you’d drink your bottle and its leftover on 2 different occasions. For Port it is less dramatic but the fewer the better.

6- Always keep your bottle standing up. If you keep it stored on its side, you’ll simply increase its surface in contact with oxygen and increase the oxidation process.

Answering some of your questions:

“I’ve heard I could put a spoon on top of an opened sparkling wine or beer to keep it fresh and bubbly if I preserve it in the fridge”.

It is a popular belief and I don’t know where this comes from, but from my experience it is just a myth.

“I’ve seen many friends keeping their Port in a nice decanter in the living room for many years. It is safe to drink?”

Yes! The big difference over the years between Port and wine is that Port will not turn into vinegar and will still be proper for consumption. It will just have a dramatically different aromatic and flavor profile.

I hope this text answers some of your doubts and if you have any more questions, please do not hesitate, I’ll do my best to answer them!

Oscar

Here are some tools you can use to open your wine/Port bottles. Which one do you prefer?

-The 2 step corkscrew is definitively the most versatile and easy tool to use.
With older wines, it can be tricky, as the cork gets softer or sticks to the glass inside the neck. With the corkscrew it can often break in 2.
-The twin blade(Ah-So) is very useful to open old bottles or if you want to preserve your cork for your collection. Here is a cool link on how to use it
-The Port Tong is another great tool to open old bottles as you heat the glass by its contact, so it can break easily by applying very cold cloth. It requires more preparation but it is always a joy to hear the cracking of the glass.
I did a video a few years ago on how to use them, follow this link

Oscar

Today I want to discuss wine aging. How can we tell if a wine will age well or not?

As passionate wine lovers, we dream of that moment where we put our lips in a cup of wine that is older than us. We’ve heard or read stories of those perfect old wines giving you chills after the first sniff in the glass. My epiphany arrived in 2010 when Villar D’Allen, a famous Port merchant family with long Port history asked my sister and I to create a blend for them. After a dinner in their historic estate, they forged in me long living memories of the perfect taste from an 1827 Vintage Port.

Aging wine was not only a fashion or a tradition, it was mandatory. Most of the great wines were not approachable in their youth and you had to keep them in your cellar for the harsh structure and flavours to smoothen or disappear. Only in the last 50 years we’ve studied oenology(the science of winemaking) seriously. We’ve learned more about ripeness and what part of the grape brings which component or flavour to the final wine. Combined with greater knowledge and prediction of weather forecast, we are able to harvest higher quality grapes, thus making much better wine and more approachable wines in their youth. This is equally true for still wines and Port wines, especially Ruby that ages in the bottle.

In the last 30 years, we’ve seen a race to make bigger wines, riper wines, bolder wines with no rough edges, great amounts of new oak flavours and increasing amount of residual sugar to hide the defects. Have we gone too far in this search of instant gratification, have we distanced ourselves too much from the essence of wine?

At Quevedo, we’ve decided to observe a moderate position meaning we do not take shortcuts that could amputate our wine aging potential but we also embrace some of the modern knowledge to make our wines better in their youth. We believe our wines should express its location and origin first before any other outside flavours. We are making wine not oak infusion. Oak is like salt and pepper, it brings complexity and it should not overtake the meal. We want our wines to be very good when we bottled them. But we do not want to sacrifice their future in any way, we hope that every wine we produce will be better and improve with some age in the bottle.

This is a tremendous task to find the perfect balance between each component to ensure the wine will evolve and improve instead of simply surviving in the bottle. Tannins, acidity, flesh, pH, extraction… Too much of one, not enough of the other and the wine that look promising will probably fall apart after a few years. We are coming back to a balance but for too many years some believed the bigger the wines, the better they will age. Balance is always the key for wine aging, tannins are great antioxidants, acidity is just as well and it keeps the wine fresh, especially for the whites.

Here are the keys when trying to figure out if a wine will age well. Balance and length of flavours on the palate are the 2 best components to look for. Some wines leave a very long presence on the palate but if it is because of the tannic structure, the strength of the alcohol or the bite of the acidity, these are signs of unbalanced wines, some will survive but few will evolve in the way that your patience will be rewarded. Another important piece of information that nowadays is easy to find, information from previous vintage. Look around and look how wine lovers are appreciating the wines from the previous years.

As usual, if you have more questions, do not hesitate!

Oscar
P.S. The photo below is a Port from Noval 1879