Welcome to Episode 6 of Ana & Al’s Big Portuguese Wine Adventure and a story woven through so many layers of history it’s hard to know where to start.
The boulder fields around the World Heritage city of Évora - in the heart of Alentejo wine country - give the name to one of Alentejo’s most famous and famously expensive wines.
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Pêra Manca which means “wobbling” or “rolling” stone, is made in only the finest years and it sells for hundreds of euros a bottle
But the name “Peramanca” dates back centuries.
In the year 1500, bottles of the already famous Évora regional wine were said to be on board explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral’s ship when he landed in Brazil.
The winery producing the latest iteration of Pêra Manca is called Cartuxa, (pronounced Car-TOUSH-ah) which is at the centre of this story.
For decades the silent presence of an ancient order of monks has guarded Cartuxa’s most precious bottles in a dark dusty cellar beneath a lake.
We were lucky enough to spend a couple of hours in the Santa Maria da Scala Coeli monastery - a name meaning “Stairway to Heaven.”
It’s now closed to visitors, but we toured a place built in the late 1500s for the Carthusian monastic order which was founded by an 11th century saint.
You can read much more all about St Bruno of Cologne, and the link between Green Chartreuse, Charterhouse schools, the Rolling Stones and the Stairway to Heaven in this previous article.
But we’re here for the wine.
Pêra Manca was a name which would have been doomed to obscurity had it not been for the Count of Vill’alva.
Vasco Maria Eugénio de Almeida – Count Vasco de Vill’alva – was the last heir to a family fortune and the founder of the Eugénio de Almeida Foundation in 1963.
He fell in love with Évora, the Alentejo and the monastery his grandfather had bought in 1871, and it was just one of the historic buildings he restored in the city.
He even invited the Carthusian monks back for the first time since the Portuguese dissolution of the monasteries in 1834.
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The foundation runs programmes for arts and culture, scholarship and support and puts profits back into the foundation.
It supports the farming community mostly through grape and olive planting and owns Cartuxa.
That’s the connection: the reason that bottles of Pêra Manca languish under the monastery lake.
Cartuxa has 600ha of vineyards and produces a whole range of wines from its Monte de Pinheiros winery which gives its name to the “entry level” brand.
Cartuxa’s most well recognised bottles are labelled “EA” taking the initials of the foundation, but their whole portfolio of wines include Cartuxa branded wines, Scala Coeli (taking its name from the monastery) right up to Pêra-Manca reds which sell for hundreds of euros a bottle.
Made from the same blocks of the same two Portuguese grapes Aragonez and Trincadeira, the wines are only produced if they’re good enough to hold the historic name handed over to the foundation in 1987 by descendants of the Casa Soares family.
The characteristic label is adapted from a famous 18th century advert.
I haven’t tried it yet – but here’s the story of a vertical tasting from someone who has. If you can find one and afford one let us know what it’s like!
I hope you enjoy this episode’s dip into a different part of Portuguese history.
We’d love to know what you think about our podcast, and please help us spread it by rating it and sharing it with your friends.
Hey there are welcome to Episode 5 of Ana & Al’s Big Portuguese Wine Adventure.
This episode we take an even deeper dive into Portugal’s Roman history through Torre de Palma - a wine hotel built on the remains of a Roman winemaking villa.
Mosaics discovered by archaeologists at Torre de Palma are now being protected at the National Museum of Archaeology in Lisbon.
Portugal loves to celebrate its many layers of history and so we begin this story at a Roman reenactment festival in Beja, the capital of the Lower Alentejo.
We meet a real life Roman soldier, a god of wine, tour a beautiful wine hotel and its cathedral of a cellar and plunge into the story of two families with similar ideas…separated by nearly two thousand years of history.
And after figuratively plunging into Alentejo’s winemaking so far in the series, this time we literally plunge into it…up to our knees in fermenting grapes to crush them underfoot.
I’ve already written about Roman winemaking history and our adventures at Torre de Palma, so rather than repeating it all, please have a read (once you’ve listened to the episode).
We do a wine tasting with head winemaker Duarte de Deus (whose last name means “of God”) and try a Tinta Miúda grape.
He says it “gives freshness to the red wines – it gives the salt and pepper to that special wine, you know, that special touch. It's really elegant.”
And there’s even a connection to Luís Duarte - one of the former Esporão winemakers we met in Episode 2.
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He designed the vineyard, choosing the grapes and setting up the winemaking.
If you haven’t heard that episode yet do have a listen.
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Podcast Trailer
Thursday, February 22, 2024 • Duration 03:13
After months of criss-crossing Alentejo in search of stories, storytellers and the best possible wines, our documentary-style podcast is almost ready to go live.
We’ve increased the number of episodes from ten to a dozen to squeeze in some extra elements of a Portuguese wine story.
Today we’re launching the latest series trailer - if there’s anyone you think would like to be a part of our journey please ask them to sign up for free, or to subscribe if they want early access to the episodes and a deeper dive.
The series is a fascinating travelogue through the history and geography of Portugal through wine.
We meet maverick winemakers, visit some of the biggest and the smallest vineyards and taste our way through two thousand years of grape-growing history...while having a lot of fun at the same time.
The first season begins in Alentejo – a new world wine region in an old world wine country and the place we now call home.
The Big Portuguese Wine Adventure is a reader-supported publication. Please consider becoming a free or a paid subscriber.
From May 2024 we’ll be launching an episode every weekend and subscribers will receive an extra midweek episode - a deeper dive into the winery of the week, longer interviews and tastings and special offers for those with a deeper interest in Portuguese wine.
And if you want to hear more about the off-grid, wine-themed eco-luxe lodge we’re building on the Alentejo coast, sign up for the weekly blog Off-Grid and Ignorant in Portugal.
And we want your thoughts and your feedback…please get in touch! We’ll let you know as soon as the first episode drops!
I love talking about talha or amphora wine - it’s one of the most exciting and popular winemaking techniques in the Alentejo.
It’s natural wine, it’s gastronomic, and it works well with the traditional Alentejo foods like black pork…but it doesn’t taste like regular wine.
Talha has an earthiness about it and is often quite heavy - like a lot of wines from Alentejo have traditionally been.
But everyone here wants to make some wine in a clay pot - that’s why the ancient vessels are so hard to get hold of!
And so winemakers are using talhas as one of the tools of their trade along with barrels and stainless steel vessels - to give certain tastes and flavours to their wines.
That doesn’t mean they all throw their whole field-blended harvest, stalks and all, into an amphora and leave it there until November 11th.For this week’s bonus episode we’re being bundled into a car by Gerações de Talha’s Teresa Caeiro who took us to a talk we just couldn’t miss, while celebrating the opening of the talhas in Vila de Frades (Friars’ Town).
For this week’s bonus episode we’re being bundled into a car by Gerações de Talha’s Teresa Caeiro who took us to a talk we just couldn’t miss, while celebrating the opening of the talhas in Vila de Frades (Friars’ Town).
She took us to Natus - a fabulous small collection wine produced by Hamilton Reis…whose day job is head winemaker at Mouchão where we’ll be heading later in the series.
He explained how it took him so long to come up with the perfect use for his talhas and about his passion project.
Have a listen!
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Episode 4: Going Roman
Saturday, May 25, 2024 • Duration 33:12
One of the hottest trends in Portuguese winemaking is using amphorae clay pots - just like the Roman’s did two thousand years ago.
In Portugal they are known as talhas, and it’s the way people in Alentejo have been making wine for generations - fermenting field-blended grapes in ancient clay vessels to produce young wines.
In the town of Vila de Frades (Friars’ Town) they claim to have been making it this way - constantly - since Roman times
The clue’s in the title of course…the monks had a thirst for it and the nearby monastery was built on the site of a Roman villa and vineyard.
And Vinho de Talha has its own DOC geographical classification (Denominação de Origem Controlada), even though it can be made in various parts of Alentejo.
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We’re taking a similar, broader approach this episode by basing our story around Vila de Frades in Vidigueira rather than just at one winery.
I’ve written quite a bit about talha winemaking over the last couple of years, so here are a few links to articles for you to read at your leisure.
It’s tough to find a talha that’s less than a hundred years old as the skills to make them and the kilns to fire them have been lost.
Vila de Frades is a small, typical Alentejo town with different coloured barras around the buildings – yellows and blues and reds.
There’s a little walkway in the centre of town, lined with orange trees which were in blossom when we visited.
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Bonus Episode (3): Wine Class
Thursday, May 23, 2024 • Duration 11:27
We packed so much into our third episode on the Plansel winery - new wine grapes, why every new grape plant must be grafted on to an American rootstock…and the great story of Jorge Bohm, Dorina Lindemann and three generations of winemakers.
But one of the things we wanted to tell you more about was their international wine school, and so that’s the topic for this week’s bonus episode.
It’s a basic introduction to wines and wine tasting, so if you’re already an expert please skip straight on to our next episode where we dive deep into the Roman history of Portugal’s wine.
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While immersing ourselves in the wines of Alentejo, we’ve been trying to improve our broader wine knowledge, and so signed up for an online course with the Wine & Spirits Educational Trust (WSET).
I’ve written about it more detail before - here’s an introduction to the course we joined…and to three grapes you may not have heard about before.
Once Dorina Lindemann heard about it she scolded us for not trying all the international grape varieties and wines and so invited us along to Plansel for one of the courses Wilmy Matum was running.
She’s a Dutch wine exporter and qualified trainer and was hosting a group of students from all over the world for her course.
In this bonus episode she tells us all about WSET, about why the description of wine needs to be standardised and what she teaches here in Portugal.
The wine school is on hiatus at the moment, but if you’re interested in applying for a course, you can email: wine-school@plansel.com
Please let us know what you think of the podcast series so far - and the bonus episodes we’re dropping. We’d love to know what you think?
And in the next episode we’ll be diving deep into Portugal’s Roman history of wine.
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Episode 3: Hard Graft
Saturday, May 18, 2024 • Duration 33:42
This episode we discover how a shipwrecked German wine heir accidentally changed Portuguese wines from the roots up, and why his daughter Dorina Lindemann began her winemaking journey with a fizz.
Now her daughters are following in the family’s footsteps at Quinta da Plansel winery and plant nursery.
We visit their estate in Montemor-o-Novo to learn about vinhos and vinhas – grapes and vines – the varieties, the grafts and the pesky pests that ruined Europe’s vineyards for half a century.
After a gentle introduction to Portugal’s wines and grapes, this episode we are learning a lot: how to make champagne, we meet a couple of new grape varieties…and we head into the classroom to start our formal wine training.
But we begin with some hard graft.
Now in his 80s, Jorge explained how two types of vines were being grafted together by hand as half-metre lengths of American roots were being cut and interlocked with small clippings of Portuguese grape varieties using something called an “omega cut.”
It’s how almost all European grapes survive the destructive phylloxera pest that arrived from America in the second half of the nineteenth century and still bugs vineyards today.
“It was phylloxera, it was oidium and mildew. These diseases destroyed the European wine culture for half a century,” said Jorge, who has dedicated his life to Portuguese grapes after washing up in Lisbon in 1961 when a damaged sailing boat nipped his voyage to the Seychelles in the bud.
Wine was in his blood as heir to a centuries old German “Hock” family which was shipping millions of bottles to the US and UK.
But while exporting Portuguese wine home, Jorge realised how unpredictable its quality could be, and when the family business took a downturn in the 1970s he decided to help do something about it.
“Portugal has officially 340 different varieties in the national catalogue of grapevine varieties, but there are very few – about 80 or 90 which are really studied,” Jorge said.
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BONUS EPISODE (2): Esporão
Wednesday, May 15, 2024 • Duration 15:31
Herdade do Esporão has a huge range of wines from the entry level Monte Velho to the once-in-a-blue-moon Torre…with all sorts of wines in between.
These are some of the Alentejo wines that you are most likely to find all over the world.
There are links to UK and US suppliers below so you can order the wines and drink along with João Ramos’ amazing tasting.
João’s moved on - back to Setúbal - and also makes his own amazing wines…but the wines he talked us through were wines made on his watch!
Of course the best way to try these wines is to come and visit!
We hope you enjoy our deep dive tasting into the wines of Esporão - please let us know what you think about these bonus episodes and what more you’d like to hear.
And please spread the word about our podcast series - we’re excited to get it out there and to tell our stories to new listeners.
As promised, here are the places where you can buy Esporão wines in the US and UK. If you speak to real people, do mention us when you buy (we don’t get a cut, but it’d be good for us if you could let them know!)
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Episode 2: Deep in Alentejo Wine Country
Saturday, May 11, 2024 • Duration 29:31
Now it’s time to head deep into the heart of Alentejo wine country: the hot, dry interior where most of the region’s wines are produced.
This episode is centred around the Esporão winery and some of its iconic winemakers, to help tell the story of a wine revolution which has shaped the Alentejo over the past 40 years.
Portugal’s wine history goes back even further than the Romans, who brought large scale wine-making to the Iberian Peninsula.
The Catholic Church and its sacrament kept the vineyards producing, and after England fell out with France it came to Portugal for its wine…and Port was born.
During the four decades of dictatorship under António de Oliveira Salazar and the regime’s “Estado Novo” or “New State” plan, centuries of wine history in Alentejo were erased when vines were ripped out to be replaced by cereals…in a region never really suitable for grains.
In 1974 the Carnation Revolution brought the regime to an end, and after a few years of instability, the Alentejo – with its sunshine, rich soils and multiple microclimates – began to once again emerge as the home of amazing wines.
Drink along with our podcast series! If you want to buy Esporão wines in the US or UK there are links at the end of this post
José Roquette bought Esporão in 1973, but the post-revolutionary communist movement seized the property until it was returned in the mid 1980s, when he began re-planting, modernising, hiring, and producing great wine.
“It was something incredible,” says Luís Duarte, who joined Esporão in 1987 straight out of the very first oenology class at the University of Trás-os-Montes close to the Douro in Vila Real.
That marked the beginning of Portugal’s modern approach to winemaking.
“When I arrived we started building one of the most famous and beautiful wineries in Portugal, but it was very difficult to build in three months: below the ground with big tunnels – it was crazy,” Luís said.
A few years later he was joined by David Baverstock, an Australian winemaker who by then had met his Portuguese wife and had been in Portugal for a decade.
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BONUS EPISODE: Vicentino
Wednesday, May 8, 2024 • Duration 13:36
You’ve heard the story of Vicentino…now enjoy a tour around the new winery.
Every week when we launch a new episode of the podcast we will be putting out a midweek deeper dive into one aspect: the winery, the winemaker or the story.
Episode 1 is just down the road from our new home on this wild Alentejo west coast and they’ve just built a huge new winery to produce and showcase their wines.
We followed their progress - we captured the moment when their roof went on in May 2023.
The building was finished just in time for the 2023 harvest and general manager of Vicentino Wines, Filipe Caetano, pulled out the first wine to be bottled at the new winery.
“This is a wine made with Arinto and it is unfiltered - so that’s the first one,” he grinned - the bottle was still waiting for its label.
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“It’s from one of our ranges of wines, which is the Naked range, which is wines with the lowest intervention possible.”
The head winemaker is Bernardo Cabral who also consults with other wineries and is known for his winemaking on Pico island in the Açores.
The resident assistant winemaker is Ana Rita Bouça, and having worked in the Açores and in New Zealand, is excited about the saltiness of Vicentino wines.
“I fell in love for salty wines when I was working at Pico,” Ana Rita said.
“Always in my life I have been very close to the ocean. So for me the proximity to the ocean is very important.”
Little expense has been spared in the new winery with concrete tulips, stainless steel tanks and lines of wooden barrels.
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Thanks so much for following our journey - please tell all your friends about us and of course you can find this podcast series in all the usual places.
And don’t forget to check in here to see the bonus content we post each week for a deeper dive into that week’s wine, winery or story.
We hope you like it - please tell your friends to subscribe for the podcast and the extra weekly bonus episodes we put out there if the episode is of particular interest.
There are talha cellars throughout town and on the corner of the main road is the Interpretative Centre which is a beautiful modern museum.
The other country famous for its amphora wine making is Georgia (the country, not the State!), but there they call them qvevri - and bury them.
The museum has bottles that you look through for videos and to smell a wine, there’s a table with two overhead projectors.
We met the mayor of Vidigueira, Rui Raposo, who explained why he wants talha wines to be given heritage status by UNESCO...as happened with Cante Alentenjao singing, which you’ll also hear this episode.
We visit Gerações de Talha – a small winery set up by Teresa Caeiro who gave up a career in diamond mining to return to her roots for love and to make wine with her grandfather Prof Arlindo Ruivo.
They have a few different wines including Natalia and Farrapo and she explains the whole process - including the story of “the mother and the son”.
We tour ROCIM with winemaker Pedro Ribeiro who champions amphorae and whose latest wine sells for €1000 a bottle.
We had dinner and did a blind wine tasting at O País das Uvas which has a "Cella Vinaria Antiqua (Historical Wine Cellar)."
Ruben Honrado is managing partner of Honrado Vineyards and he gave us a wine tasting with a difference – a blind tasting where we drank from black glasses and were challenged to tell red wine from white, and talha wine from more regular blends.
We hope you enjoy the episode - it’s one of our favourite stories so far.
He knows because he moved here to study and help develop them.
“The process of grape vine production is a technology which has been developed since the beginning of the last century.”
American root stocks were resistant to the phylloxera, oidium and mildew which invaded unprotected European vineyards when they arrived aboard ship.
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Grafting the old, traditional varieties on to the resistant roots allowed wineries to rebuild, recover and thrive, but the pests remain and the process continues today.
Once grafted, wax is used to protect the join and the little Frankensteins are packed into boxes with peat and substrate to be locked away in a warming room for two or three weeks to grow together.
They are then planted in the ground for a while before being uprooted, pruned and sold to winemakers – and wannabes like us – in Portugal and all over the world.
The nursery began 40 years ago with a an in-depth study of Portuguese grapes and now produces one and a half million planting vines a year.
Back in the late 1970s, Jorge worked with the Portuguese government and winemaking universities of Évora in Alentejo and Geisenheim in Germany to select the top 40 most promising grapes, made a load of wine and took it on a global tasting road trip.
“We went to France to Montpellier University, to the Masters of Wine in London, to the university of Geisenheim and even to America to make a ranking of which are the best in the world and by this knowledge we started our breeding programme,” he said.
“The result was always the same: the Touriga Nacional was normally the best and we started to build up these varieties in different forms.”
He wrote a thick reference book on their work and began to select the best clones to make the best wines.
Plansel also hosts an International Wine School which is featured in the podcast.
Here’s an introduction to the course we joined…and to three grapes you may not have heard about before.
“In 1980 my daddy brought 150 native varieties down to the Alentejo to be planted here. We tested them for quality, quantity, performance and everything,” said Dorina Lindemann, Jorge’s daughter who moved here in 1993 after studying oenology in Germany.
She was dedicated to following the increasing international trend towards using single grape varieties for her wines.
“I started with monovarietal wines, but nobody wanted to taste my wines because everybody in Portugal was used to the blends – they had at least a five, six or seven grape varieties mixture. It changed, but the beginning was very hard for me.”
Dorina Lindemann still produces single variety wines, fresh sparkling wines and powerful blends from Quinta da Plansel.
Her two daughters are following her into the business and her father still wanders remote vineyards in the summer heat looking for new clones.
“He goes every day to the field: he goes to Spain, to the borders, he looks for which Aragonez [grape] has got more resistant, thicker skins,” said Dorina.
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Bordeaux has elevated Touriga Nacional, one of the most famous Portuguese grapes, as an official grape for use in their famous and famously regulated blends – and that’s because they thrive in the searing temperatures of the Alentejo and the climate is changing.
“We did never overcome the problem of what happened in 1850, when the English imported plants from America and brought the diseases,” said Jorge.
“We reacted not by finding a variety which was resistant, but by using an excess of chemical intervention. And chemical intervention is not the solution.
“It is destroying the bees and a thousand other things, and this cannot be a solution. It was a solution for 100 years, but it's not the future.
“And that's why I'm working on that – I think this is important to maintain a natural, growing culture,” he said about his continuing, lifelong vocation of finding the perfect grapes.
“In the early days, when I first came over here, it was very hit or miss,” said David.
“You’d buy red wine in a supermarket and it was maybe a little bit fizzy, a bit gassy or dirty or something because the malolactic fermentation hadn't been properly controlled. There were a lot of basic winemaking faults back then.
“A lot of it was just sort of handed down from generation to generation, there wasn't a lot known about the grape varieties, and suddenly they realised they've got these 250 indigenous grape varieties that no other country in the world has.”
Portugal’s entry into the then European Economic Community (EEC) in 1986 made a huge difference.
“The money just poured in: the roads got better, there was money for vineyards and wineries,” added David.
And the money was put to good use – investment in research, stainless steel tanks, temperature-controlled fermentation, university courses and the knowledge to grow the right grapes in the right places.
The region is now the biggest producer for the domestic market. Unlike the narrow terraced hillsides of the Douro, the wide rolling hills provide plenty of space for more vineyards and mechanised harvesting.
Deep below the ground, Esporão’s cellar is as impressive today with an amazing and refreshingly cool temperature despite the intense Alentejo heat.
The cavernous cellar space resembles a cathedral or a subterranean football field.
“Or a metropolitan station – an underground station?” suggested Sandra Alves, the third winemaker we spoke to for this lesson in wine history…and who gave us a tour of the iconic winery.
It’s a great place to visit in Reguengos de Monsaraz, and well set up for visitors, with tours, tastings and restaurant with a Michelin star and a Michelin green star for sustainability.
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José Roquette’s son João took over the running of the winery and made another ambitious step in the 2000s when he decided the whole estate should become organic.
With more than 600ha of vines, Esporão is now one of the top ten largest organic vineyards in the world.
Esporão produces a whole range of wines in Alentejo from the famous mass-market Monte Velho to the Reservas, Private Selection bottles and the “Torre” wines which are only produced in exceptional years.
Named after the famous tower, they have only been released from the 2004, 2007, 2011 and 2017 vintages, picked up a lot of points from wine critics and sell for hundreds of euros.
To receive a bonus episode features a wine tasting of Esporão’s range of wines by former winemaker João Ramos please sign up as a paid subscriber
All Alentejo’s eight DOC’s (Denominaçãos de Origem Controlada) nuzzle up to the border with Spain.
Any regional wines not produced inside a DOC are known as “Alentejano” wines.
“We started to follow the ideas that David brought from Australia – from the new world,” said Luís Duarte, of the time when Esporão started to experiment.
“When this happened it was very important for Portugal because it added a lot of people with knowledge of the new technology,” which Luís said led to increased confidence from investors that Portuguese wine was a good place to spend their money.
“We belong to the old world of wine but we are very new in terms of our knowledge,” especially when compared to places like France that didn’t suffer the disruption of dictatorship.
“The generalisation is still that Alentejo can produce very, very easy drinking commercial style wines in quite big volumes,” added David Baverstock.
“There's a general stereotype, particularly with the reds, that they're going to be a bit on the heavier side, they're going to have soft tannins...a fair bit of alcohol and they're going to be quite ripe fruit flavour.”
But he explained winemakers are now moving towards making fresher and more elegant wines which the different terroirs and better understanding of Portuguese grapes encourages.
“Alentejo is really drinkable wine, a really intense wine – at some stage really fruity. Almost exotic for an American market, but at the same time, it's gastronomic as well,” said Sandra Alves, looking out over the parched soil, the cork oak trees and the big skies.
“All the intensity that you see all around you...all this yellow and green and blue – I think the wines show these colours, all this intensity is everything very powerful, very intense, very unique.
“I would say that you need to taste to understand and you need to come here as well to understand what I'm talking about,” she said.
Of all the wines we’re drinking in this series, Esporão is one of the easiest for you to find outside of Portugal.
“The purpose is really to allow to give all the conditions to the winemakers team to deliver the best wines possible,” said Filipe who took us down into the cellar which is partly built underground to expose the bedrock.
Please let us know what you think about our Bonus Episode - deep dives into a winery may not be for everyone, so feel free to pass over these additional updates and make sure you listen in every weekend when new episodes drop.
And here is Episode 1 for you to enjoy, in case you haven’t heard it yet.
And if you’d like to get hold of some Vicentino wines to try, the easiest way is to come and see us here in the Valley of the Stars…and to visit Vicentino.
But while you wait, it is available in the UK at the moment through Vindependents - here’s the link.
See you next time, when we’re heading deep into traditional Alentejo wine country to visit the legendary Esporão winery.
