I love Portuguese wines. In Portugal you will find a range of diverse wine regions, a lot indigenous grapes and great wines. You will also find a lot of wine makers that works with interesting projekt wines or experimentering with methods and have out of the box ideas. The wines are also very affordable, even though there are a few wines that are really expensive.
If you want to get a good overview of what is happening in Portugal my recommendation is to visit the Adegga winemarket. Adegga is a company that Andre Ribeirinho, Daniel Matos and André Cid Proença has built from a passion of wine and technology to a wine market, a web portal and an app, winespots (available for you guys how have an Iphone). They do several wine markets over the year, in Lisbon and in Porto, read more about them here and make sure to come to one.
I try to visit at least one of these wine markets every year. This year I attended the wine market in Lisbon on december 1st. Here I was being able to meet about 70 wine makers and try somewhere around 600 wines. No – I didn’t taste em all but I tried somewhere along 250-300 and I think I tasted from most of the wine makers that was on site. I also get a chance to meet a lot of friends, from Portugal and from other countries coming in for the fair.
Every year I also try to make a list of my favourite wines. These are from the wines that is possible to purchase through Adegga (there are also wines that are not available to buy, among them several wines from the premium room). This year I’ve chosen five white wines, five red wines and fine fortified wines. The wines are not listed in any particular order except being white, red or fortified. This is my pick of the litter from the 2017 Lisboa Adegga winemarket:
White wines (branco)
5. Soalheiro Terramatter alvarinho 2016
Red wines (tinto)
5. Quinta do Pôpa VV vinhas velhas 2013
Fortified wines (fortificado)
Testimony of a wine junkie 