Lovers of champagne (woops, I mean sparkling wine), are awaiting the release this autumn of the Windsor Vineyard 2014 vintage with the febrility of a champagne cork about to be popped.
I am not in a position to disclose the exact date of this release but, if you are interested in tasting the royal bubbly, you should move fast as last year the 2013 vintage sold out weeks before Christmas.
We shall see in due course whether the spectacular new MAAT (Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology), the elegant vessel on the banks of the River Tagus in Lisbon, will become Portugal’s leading contemporary art museum. For the time being, this position is uncontestably held by the Serralves Foundation. It is no coincidence that the Foundation is located in the country’s most exciting city: Porto.
The Foundation’s permanent collection of contemporary works from the 1960s onwards, by both Portuguese and international artists, is housed in a sleek white building designed by Pritzker Prize winner Alvaro Siza Vieira, a leading figure in the modernist architectural movement known as the ‘School of Porto’.
The Portuguese writer Eça de Queiroz (pictured) was one of the nineteenth century’s greatest novelists. His satirical novel The City and the Mountains, the second part of which takes place in the Douro, will appeal to contemporary readers seeking fulfilment far from their cities.
Rereading recently Margaret Jull Costa’s excellent translation of Eça de Queiroz’s satirical novel The City and the Mountains, I found the account of Jacinto’s transformation from Paris sophisticate to Douro gentleman farmer just as enchanting as on my first reading.
When I was twenty, I was given the unexpected opportunity to spend a month working on the legendary Bordeaux wine estate Château Lafite Rothschild, writes James Mayor
In London I had been working for the genial Richard who ran a direct selling wine company with the promising name of ‘Wine as You Like It’. London was a huge market of thirsty punters and we went for them with our range of cheerful wines. There was no doubt about it, they certainly ‘liked it’!
In July, Cockburn’s, the largest of the port wine lodges, opened its new visitor’s centre, creating probably Porto’s most exciting wine experience.
Founded just over two hundred years ago, in the same year as Waterloo - 1815 - the venerable port firm of Cockburn’s has opened a spectacular visitor’s centre in its warehouses in Vila Nova da Gaia, the Porto suburb home to the port industry’s lodges.
On my way to the Douro the other day, I stopped off in Vila Nova de Gaia to check out the site of Europe’s most ambitious wine cultural project, the World of Wine. The brain child of The Fladgate Partnership CEO, Adrien Bridge, World of Wine will open in June 2020.
Vila Nova de Gaia is the Porto ‘suburb’ home to the port lodges whose red-roofed cellars face the city of Porto like so many rows of vines in the autumn. It is here that port wines have traditionally been aged after being carried down the racing waters of the River Douro in flat bottom boats known as rabelos.
It is no exaggeration to say that the past week has been particularly rich in horrifying events. In America, Spain and Portugal, the summer holiday season has been polluted by emotions of fear, hate and anguish.
Rolling Stones frontman, Mick Jagger, has raised his voice in anger against Brexit and British vulnerability. Released last week, ‘England Lost’ is the 74-year-old Jagger’s first solo mix of music and political commentary.
Jagger began writing the song back in April and has raced past customary music industry lengthy launch schedules to release it while it still reflects the political context which inspired it.
