DU VIN, VINO, VINHO


"The discovery of a good wine is increasingly better for mankind than the discovery of a new star." - Leonardo da Vinci

Muscadet, Cabernet, and Merlot in France. Port in Portugal. Monastrell and Tempranillo in Spain. In the past couple of weeks, we have been touring wineries and tasting wines in these three countries. We tried wines in visits to the Loire Valley, the Medoc region of Bordeaux, Oporto, and Ibiza.

In the Loire Valley, we visited a small, family-owned winery that produces white wines from the Muscadet grape. 

Castle remains in Clisson, in the Loire Valley

Loire wine tasting
By contrast, in Medoc we visited a chateau owned by an individual who owns 60 other wineries around the world, and produces red wines primarily of a blend of Cabernet Savignon and Merlot. 

Wine Chateau in Medoc/Bordeaux



In Oporto, our visit was to the last wine lodge that is still Portuguese-owned. The rest are now owned by beverage companies from elsewhere, primarily the UK.

Wine lodges of Oporto


All of these involved tastes of an ounce each of two or three wines. Spain was an entirely different experience. In Spain, one does not taste wine. One drinks it. And one does not just sit and drink wine. There must be food. Wine and food, food and wine. They are a unitary experience. So, in Cadiz, the emphasis was on the food—the tapas—but wine was there for each taste. In Ibiza, at a family-owned, small-batch winery, the emphasis was on wine, but food was there for each glass. And this was not an ounce to taste. We received four full glasses of wine (plus a shot of liqueur), and with each glass a different type of tapas. And probably the best wine of the various tours (though most of the others were superb).  It was good that none of us was driving.

Tapas and wine in Cadiz

Speaking of which, the countryside drives to get to the wineries were as lovely as the wines.

It is hard to go wrong with a European wine tour. Or two. Or five.


Barrels of Wine:

Oporto Barrels

Ibiza barrels
Barrels in Bordeaux




Barrels in Loire Valley






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

REYKJAVIK, ICELAND: BLUE, GREEN, AND GRAY

Image
“ There are few more certain tokens of ill than not to know how to accept the good .” – from The Saga of Gretti (a classic Icelandic saga) Despite what one may think, the blue in Iceland’s flag does not represent the sea that surrounds this island nation. Instead, it stands for the hues of the landscape, where even the green is blue-ish, and the thermal pools of water that seem to be everywhere are multiple shades of blue. And it most definitely does not evoke the sky, which seems to be a perpetual shade of gray. Or that may be just this year: we were told that May and June 2018 were the rainiest in the past 100 years. Despite the gray skies, our two days in Reykjavik were wonderful. My only complaint is that there wasn’t enough time to do even a fraction of what I wanted to do. So, Iceland is definitely on the “come back and stay a while” list of places. First on the agenda was to bathe in the infamous Blue Lagoon. In the midst of a lava field some 45 mi
Read more

NEVER AGAIN: BREENDONK

Image
  " What is done cannot be undone, but one can prevent it happening again. " - Anne Frank Hall of Remembrance Who are you? Are you the concentration camp nurse whose focus is to monitor the torture to make sure it stops just short of killing the person, or are you the nurse who quietly provides medicines to relieve dysentery? Are you the “responsible” (the prisoner designated as in charge of a barrack) who demands bribes from the others to get the larger pieces of bread or a sleeping platform away from the slop pot? Or are you the one who ensures that the weakest get a bit more food, and that facilities, such as they are, are shared equally? When faced with the unspeakable, do any of us know which among the untenable choices we will make? During WWII, some faced those choices and chose the best route available and others chose the worst. And millions of others faced no choice at all but misery and death. Those circumstances were encapsulated in a place
Read more

ISAFJORDUR, ICELAND: FISH AND SMILES

Image
Bolungarvik “ The inhabitants have always been considered hard working, fiercely independent and a bit quirky (like most of the people of Westfjords to be honest).” – from the Port of Isafjordur brochure, discussing the town of Bolungarvik. A pleasant expression on the face. A warm greeting. A dry sense of humor. This seems to be endemic among the people of the Westfjords peninsula of Iceland, where we have made our first stop in this island nation with a population numbering only 334,000. Some 2,700 of those people live in the town of Isafjordur where we docked, and another 882 in the town of Bolungarvik just up the road and through a tunnel. Isafjordur is the area hub, with two grocery stores, two bars, a government-run liquor store, a hotel, a university, and a variety of other establishments. Like the rest of Iceland, fishing is the area’s mainstay. The winters are harsh and covered with snow, and summers are pleasantly cool. The scenery is spectacular, wi
Read more