During recessions, people tend to trade down their gustatory pleasures. Less expensive foods are favoured over more refined and processed foods. Wine drinkers start buying less expensive products but don’t want to give up taste.
This provides an opportunity for wine producing countries that offer value wines. In such countries land is less expensive, labour abundant, and technology advanced.
Portugal is one such country. Located on the Iberian Peninsula, this small country has been producing wine well over 2000 years, and recently switched to modern wine making techniques. Modern Portuguese wines are fruity, well defined, offer a lot of taste, are east to enjoy, designed to complement food and above all value priced.
If you want low alcohol and fragrant white wines , go with vino verde, to match fish dishes, pastas, assorted cured meats and seafood based appetizers.
Regional wines are fine, and if you are fond of fortified sweet wines, Port and Madeira wines will please your palate.
Portugal has 11 delimited regions, each of which contains several sub-regions noted for their different characteristics.
Two decades ago, Portuguese winemakers and winery owners decided to use predominantly indigenous grape varieties, and occasionally supplement them, if at all, with international ones like cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay, sauvignon blanc, cabernet franc, and syrah just to name a few. A few wineries produce and market varietal wines derived exclusively from foreign grape varieties in an attempt to gain market share, as many in export markets are more apt to buy such wines with which they are familiar.
In fact since 2008, Portuguese wine sales worldwide have substantially increased.
The L. C. B. O. offers several fine Portuguese wines in its general list offerings, and frequently the Vintages division features excellent products at very reasonable cost, for example on November 21 release Frei Joao 2006 by Caves Joao, from Bairrada in northern Portugal. This full-bodied, fruity, well-balanced red wine with soft tannins drinks well now, but can be aged
for two to three years to become even more refined. It is easy to enjoy now, with meat-sauced pastas, medium-rare steaks, roast beef, stews, and with semi-hard or hard cheeses.
Frei Joao is highly recommended and represents good value.
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