Readers who also subscribe to the blog Off-Grid and Entertaining in Portugal will recognise some repetition here - apologies.
As if the news wasn’t bad enough over in the world affairs pages, things are apparently just as bad in the wine columns…where we’re supposed to be able to escape all the chaos.
But no…wine, it seems, is also in crisis.
The EU is paying farmers to pull up vines to tackle the glut of a new European wine lake.
Let’s face it - there’s so much wine here in Portugal they were washing the streets with it two years ago (for a more thorough clean I’d have gone for white myself).
The last time the European wine tanks were full to overflowing in the 1980s they had to rush to distill it into industrial quantities of industrial brandy…and that way madness lies.
Brandy definitely counts as breaking the dry January thing…whereas the occasional grape juice isn’t going to harm, is it?
This week I read a nicely written piece in The Economist about how the decline of wine reflects changes in society.
It’s about isolation, loneliness...and the lubricating antidote which oils the wheels of social interaction.
So I decided to pull some quotes from the piece…explore how we’re trying to help and encourage you to do the same.
It struck a real chord because it falls in line with what we’re trying to do here: bringing interesting people together with a glass of wine, sharing a meal and a story.
And if that also resonates with you, please follow our first steps up onto the barricades to fight for what we believe in.
Thanks for reading The Big Portuguese Wine Adventure! This post is public so feel free to share it.
In this beautiful part of Portugal - the southwestern coast of the Alentejo - which is replete with wellness and detox practitioners, we are breaking the mould and taking a holistic approach to self-care in a different direction.
Please sign up for our very first Wine Retreat in collaboration with the Hutchins Wine Academy and the brilliant Joanna Hutchins whose immersion course in wine will immerse you in the noble international grapes and pique your interest in Portugal’s 350 different varieties.
Here’s the full brochure…please get in touch for more details and join the growing gang of wine pioneers…wino-neers…determined to fight for the future of every last grape.
But to help persuade you, allow me to explain what’s got me all fired up and even more determined to champion Portugal’s position as the world’s largest consumer of wine per head of population…by considerably more than any other nation.
Hopefully this link will take you to the full Economist article, but if not, you’ll get the gist as I tease out a few thoughts and pick it all apart.
“The long, dark days can lower people’s moods”
On the one hand it’s a great idea giving up booze for January, but on the other it’s a terrible time to deny yourself something nice to warm up the longer nights...especially when the act of drinking takes you to a nice cosy bar.
But straight off the back of the festive season with bulging belt buckles it seems like the right thing to do (“the exhortations of do-gooders to forgo...” as the writer elegantly puts it!)
Ana and I have cut back this month...but more in the realisation that running a tourism lodge around wine and joining in with every guest is going to kill us pretty quickly.
I’ve never suffered from the SAD (seasonal affective disorder) short days depression, but that’s mostly because I’ve organised my life around living in places where it’s still warm and sunny most of the time.
SADly alcohol sales are on the wane through a combination of a GenZers drinking a lot less (presumably as a form of revolution against the grown-ups who set such a bad example during their childhood) and the various studies citing the health detriments of booze, but the Economist interviewees say there’s more to it than that.
“Wine’s decline reflects something deeper: a fraying of the social fabric that once held Western societies together.”
That’s what Andrés Pérez thinks.
His family runs the Alyan vineyard in Chile (which looks amazing by the way) where “Wine tasting...is more a carefully curated social event than a lesson in tannins.”
I said exactly the same thing presenting this week’s wine story-tasting for 43 people...well, perhaps not quite as eloquently or directly, but it’s what I meant... it’s less about fancy language and more about enjoying what you like.
Yes, you read it correctly, wine tasting...for 43...that was a first!
We had a fantastic group staying on their corporate retreat, or ‘off-site’ as we’ve learned is the new word for it.
In collaboration with nearby yoga centre Orada (and with huge thanks to David for asking us to be involved), we hosted the Verto Eduction management team for the week.
Our solar system once again brilliantly navigated a full house despite the rain as the study abroad programme staff gathered from all over the world and cosied up in the Clubhouse to hear a little Portuguese history through wine.
We treated them to our favourite Vicentino white blend, a Gerações de Talha introduction to Alentejo’s amphora wine world, some Esporão Reserva 2022 and Mouchão’s stunning 2017 Alicante Bouschet.
Alyan winery in Chile apparently “once offered hour-long tasting sessions. Now they last four. By the end of the visit, strangers are swapping numbers and shaking hands.” Shaking hands? After four hours? Wow.
While I didn’t bang on about Alentejo wines for four hours, the volume of conversation certainly went up as the wine went down.
Thanks for reading The Big Portuguese Wine Adventure! This post is public so feel free to share it.
“Anthropologists see the decline in communal eating as part of a broader social unravelling.”
We’ve loved hosting a family-style meal around a long table on the terrace when we’ve had the time in this first year of being open.
(Running this place is sometimes a bit like the Trump presidency...it feels like a lot longer, but it still hasn’t been a full year!)
It’s been great to bring people together over a fish braai or some grilled black pork with lashings of Alentejo wine – ideally from a flagon – to get the conversations going.
“People across the rich world increasingly live, and eat, alone. As a result, more people now eat and unwind in front of screens.”
Now that’s an easy one,
We encourage guests to the valley to let their phones have a holiday too: to switch off and take it easy...ideally from the comfort of a locked box (the phones, not the guests).
Phil Davies – friend and BBC cameraman from Nairobi always swore we needed to go on safari at least once every six weeks to give our eye muscles a workout.
After all the close up reading we do in front of screens, he argued, we periodically need to scan a distant horizon to maintain the flexibility to switch to long vision.
It’s also great while on safari with friends to be practiced enough to know the difference between a lion and a rock that looks like a lion at 400m.
Our views are vast, there’s a old windmill on a hill to focus on and we do have a few rocks that look like Iberian lynx...and of course a big library of books and shelves of games for quiet days.
But of course off-grid doesn’t mean always offline as there’s a need to keep in touch.
“Generation Z...drink differently, increasingly seeking out quality and novelty.”
Tick.
Of the 350 different grapes grown in Portugal, 250 are indigenous.
And nothing says wine novelty more than Antão Vaz and Arinto, Trincadeira, Tinta Miúda and the two Touriga’s (Nacional and Franca).
Quality and novelty are a draw with young drinkers on the basis that the reason the hipster burnt their mouth on coffee was because they wanted to drink it before it was cool (buh-buhm-tshing).
Alentejo is of course home to the original natural wine – talha, or amphora wine made the way the Romans made it...and made that way in a few places ever since.
And it’s perhaps the main reason our lower, or Baixo Alentejo, has been awarded European city of wine for 2026.
“For some people, drinking is an isolating addiction. But for most it is a social indulgence. And that, increasingly, is what people are missing.”
I’ve always loved a bit of social indulging. I have been known to socially overindulge, but only occasionally.
And that’s the inspiration around a few of the things we’re planning for this year.
Did I mention the Wine Retreat we’re doing with the Hutchins Wine Academy in May? Join the rush of wino-neers while there are still places left!
More than fifty wines, some amazing meals and vineyard adventures and you’ll leave it tasting like a sommelier (whatever they taste like)!
The EU is providing “funds to uproot grapevines in order to reduce the bloc’s wine glut.”
Of course they are.
So obviously we’re planting half a hectare while everyone’s getting money for pulling vines up.
Speaking of which, I really must get my wellies on, take to the field and start counting up how many plants we need to get for March...I don’t trust my geometry (or ChatGPT’s).
Oh, and if anyone actually knows how to plant grapes, or thinks it sounds like fun and fancies giving us a hand, do let me know!
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