Good news for wine devotees

A fine wine grasps you by the hand and calls you by your first name, according to Elizabeth David (a food writer). If that's true, then there will be a lot of friendly handshakes in 2010. A friend came back today from his family vindimas (grape harvesting) with stories of how this year is going to be a really great year for wine (he was in Bairrada) which will be ready in 5 or 6 years. I also read the other day that it had been a very good year for wines in Alentejo. I'm smiling in both languages.

A quick search for buying Portuguese wines online and I came up with: Loja do Vinho in Sintra; Vinhos Online which also includes a glossary and detailed information about the producers (mostly in Portuguese); A slick site in French, English and Portuguese from and about Dourowines.

My search took me mostly to Port wine, which isn't nearly so interesting. Funny how wine is such an important industry in Portugal (and Portugal is the seventh largest wine producing country in the world) but still has to be commercialised on an international scale. It has also, by the way, been a bumper year in Portugal for cork I found out today.