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April 2022

Education

Portuguese Wine Sales are Booming. Here is Why…

Frederico Falcao

Frederico Falcão is a man on a mission : to spread the gospel of Portugal’s diversity of high quality wines from the Douro to Alentejo and beyond.

After studying agronomy and oenology, Falcão worked a winemaker for 18 years before becoming the youngest ever president of Portugal’s Instituto da Vinha e do Vinho (Institute of Vine and Wine). In his current role heading up Wines of Portugal, Falcão has ambitious plans.

He shared his vision with me yesterday over a cool glass of Vinho Verde at the bustling Wines of Portugal trade fair in Montréal.

Frederico, with so many terroirs and grapes, how do you explain Portuguese wines to newcomers?

We call ourselves “a world of diversity” because it is the only way to sum up our rich mosaic of wines. You go to Vinho Verde, you have granite soils, cool temperatures, a rainy climate. Then you drive just one and a half hours, and you are in Douro, with its schist slopes. It is hot and very dry. The grapes are different, everything changes. You go to Dão, Bairrada, Alentejo, they are all completely different.

Its very complex because it is not one single grape, one single style of wine, but that is what makes Portuguese wine so fascinating.

Wine lovers must agree because your international sales are booming! I recently read that Portuguese wine exports grew by 8% (to over 925 million euros) in 2021; doubling the growth seen in 2020. What is driving this trend?

Twenty years ago, people didn’t know that Portuguese wine existed. It was only Port. And in many cases, they didn’t even realize that Port wine came from Portugal. It was like a brand, a style of wine, and not a Portuguese appellation (PDO). We have been working hard to promote Portugal in the past twenty years and I think we have done it well.

Portugal is becoming very trendy when it comes to tourism. A lot of people are visiting. When they travel to Portugal, not knowing much about the country, they are always surprised – with the food, the wines, the landscape, the people, with everything.

Wines in Portugal are not expensive. In Canada, an everyday wine costs 10 dollars minimum, closer to the 15 – 20 dollar mark for a good wine. In Portugal, you can buy well-made wines for 4 euros. The quality available for such inexpensive prices is a surprise for a lot of tourists. So when they go back home, they start buying more Portuguese wine.

Portugal is the leader in wine consumption per capita in the world. We drink a lot of wine! But it is not only the Portuguese, its also the visitors. People are getting fed up with just drinking Cabernet Sauvignons and Chardonnays. Portugal has grapes you won’t find anywhere else, that are reasonably priced, and great quality.

As you say, international audiences have only discovered Portugal’s table wines relatively recently. Have you seen a big improvement in the quality of these wines over the course of your career?

Absolutely. I have seen a dramatic improvement in the style of wine and in winemaking.

There is a younger generation of winemakers now who travel outside of Portugal, who taste wines from around the world, and compare their wines with their peers. My generation were the first to do this. Beforehand, winemakers never left their regions.

Twenty years ago, most wineries were making wines for the domestic market. Now they are making wines that are easier to appreciate for international consumers less familiar with Portugal.

We have a huge range of grape varieties and an equally large diversity of grape growing terroirs. It gives us so much scope to experiment, to innovate, and to improve the quality of our wines.

How is the Portuguese wine industry working towards greater sustainability?

The Porto Protocol was an important kick-off to get the wine trade talking more seriously about climate change and sustainability. Many of our wineries have strong sustainability practices in place, not only environmental, but also social, and economic, but there wasn’t a structure in place.

Alentejo has established their own certification system, but before we ended up with 14 regional programs, we decided to create one national certification through ViniPortugal (Wines of Portugal). We are very near the end of the process, so it is an exciting time.

Our goal is to have all of Portugal’s wineries certified in our program and really be leaders in this domain.

If you could send one message about Portugal to international wine lovers, what would it be?

With Portuguese wine, you get more than you pay for. You can taste this in our 15 dollar wine, but it is equally true of our 50 dollar wines. The value is there at every quality level. It really is worth exploring our diversity of grapes, wine regions, and styles.

After our chat, I spent some time tasting through a wide range of wines and Frederico Falcão’s words rang true. At every price point and in every wine style, I found fresh, balanced wines that are definitely in tune with an international palate.

The wines photographed above are just a small sampling of favourites from the tasting.

Portuguese Wine Fast Facts (source: Wines of Portugal):

  • Portugal boasts over 250 native wines grapes
  • The top five red grapes are: Aragonez, Touriga Franca, Touriga Nacional,  Castelão, and Trincadeira
  • The top five white grapes are:  Fernão Pires, Loureiro, Arinto, Síria (aka Codega), and Alvarinho
  • Wine styles range from still whites, rosé, and red, to sparkling wine (vinho espumante), to fortified wines: Port, Madeira, Moscatel
  • Total vineyard area is: 192 028 hectares (2.7% of world’s acreage)
  • There are 31 DOC appellations and 14 Vinho Regional areas in Portugal
  • DOC wine production is: 59% red wine, 24% white wine, 7% rosé
  • Major wine production regions include: Douro, Lisboa, Alentejo, and Minho (Vinho Verde territory)
Education Reviews

How to Buy More Sustainable Wine? Consider the Packaging.

HOW TO BUY MORE SUSTAINABLE WINE

Making eco-responsible purchasing decisions is a daunting task. I can’t count how many times I have found myself frozen, deer-in-the-headlights style, mid-aisle of a grocery store or wine shop pondering competing green claims.

Where wine is concerned, buying certified organic might seem like the obvious solution. However, there is quite a lot more to consider when looking for the product with the lowest possible carbon footprint. Scroll down to the end for a short form video version of this article. 

According to International Wineries for Climate Action, wine packaging and transport to market account for over 40% of their member wineries’ climate emissions. Environmental impact studies from retailers, wine regions, and researchers across the globe agree that these two areas are by far the biggest contributors to a wine’s carbon footprint.

Most wine is packaged and shipped in glass bottles. Glass wine bottles have been used for thousands of years. They are sturdy, transparent, inert, and neutral. These latter two qualities make glass the preferred vessel for fine wines, as it best preserves wine aromas and flavours over time. Glass bottles are also reusable and infinitely recyclable.

Photo credit: iStockphoto.com

But glass has a few major problems. New glass bottles are incredibly energy intensive to manufacture. Sand melts to form glass at a whopping 17 hundred degrees Celsius (the same temperature a space shuttle reaches as it re-enters earth’s atmosphere). The energy source for most of these furnaces is natural gas combustion.

Starting with recycled glass obviously lowers carbon footprint substantially, but glass recycling temperatures are also very high. And, while glass recycling rates are impressive across much of northern Europe, many of the world’s most populous nations, like the US, have disappointing track records.

According to a 2018 US Environmental Protection Agency study, only a quarter of glass containers used for consumer goods in America are recycled. The majority end up buried in landfills. This shortcoming is attributed to poorly designed, single stream collection systems in many states, resulting in improper sorting, mixing of glass formats, and glass shatter.

Glass wine bottles are also very heavy. Over the past decade there has been a growing move to lighter weight bottles, with major retailers like the LCBO, championing the cause. However,  many producers still feel compelled to package their best wines in bottles weighing up to a kilo or more.

Graphic source: LCBO (Lightweight Glass Bottle Program: mandatory  for wines under $16 retail)

The weight of glass bottles, and their shape (tapered at the neck, meaning lots of wasted space in packing), equate to high carbon emissions during marine and overland transport.

At the 2020 Porto Protocol Climate Change Conference, climate change expert Dr. Richard Smart cited Australian studies on wine carbon emissions from the vineyard to the end consumer. The research indicated that, “export of wine in glass bottles, their transport and limited recycling had the largest carbon footprint (68%)”.

So, what is an eco-conscience wine lover to do? Well, if you live in Sweden, you drink your wine from a box.

In a recent Master of Wine packaging sustainability seminar, Ulf Sjödin MW, head of category management at the nation’s wine retailer Systembolaget, indicated that 59% of their wines are now sold in bag-in-box.

The format has long been popular in Scandinavia, notably for its convenient size and shape but also for its eco values. A joint lifecycle assessment analysis commissioned in 2010, and updated in 2018, by Sweden, Norway, and Finland’s liquor monopolies, revealed that wines in boxes, pouches, and tetrapak cartons have the lowest carbon footprint and least climate impacts per litre.

Graphic source: Alko (boxed wine not featured but calculated at 70 g CO2 e/L)

Wine boxes, pouches, and PET bottles require far less energy to manufacture than glass. They are also significantly lighter formats. An empty PET bottle weighs up to ten times less  than the same volume glass bottle (of 560 grams). Formats like wine boxes, cartons, and pouches are very compact, another integral aspect in lowering their carbon footprint during transport. Finally, these formats are far less breakable than glass, limited product waste.

I realize that the idea of buying wine in a box, a plastic bottle, or a can may seem like sacrilege to many. Environmental benefits aside, wine quality in these formats hasn’t been that great historically. The wines were generally mass-produced, uninteresting wines with very limited shelf lives.

Improper filling of bag-in-box wines often led to premature oxidation issues. Previous generation PET bottles suffered high oxygen ingress levels and were thus dosed with far higher sulphur levels (than glass bottle wines) to ward off spoilage.

Happily, both the quality of wines packed in alternative formats, and the technology of these containers, have come a long way. PET bottles are now multi-layered with oxygen barriers and scavengers. Sulphur additions have come down dramatically and shelf life is much higher (up to 18 months, depending on the initial wine quality).

Aluminium cans are energy intensive to produce, like glass, but they are highly recyclable. More importantly, of beverage containers, they are reported to have the highest recycling rates world-wide. Most aluminum cans in circulation today are made from significant levels of recycled content. In the US, the average can has 73% recycled content.

The topic of sustainability in wine packaging and transport is a tricky one, with countless variables to consider, and no perfect answers. Today’s bag-in-boxes, pouches, and PET bottles are recyclable, but only to a limited degree, with loss of quality over time. End of life disposal and ensuing micro plastic pollution continues to be a significant concern, though advances in bio-PET and other sustainable materials is on-going.

Glass bottles remain the best way to preserve wine flavour and freshness over time. However, for everyday wines you plan to consume shortly after purchasing, it might be worth considering other wine packaging options.

PET, pouches, and cans make great outdoor wine serving options and many boxed wines will stay fresh for four to six weeks after opening so are great for sipping overtime.

As a parting thought, if you can’t find the wines you love in these alternate formats, try to at least buy lightweight glass bottles. Heavier bottles do not equate to better wines. They are unnecessary and unethical.

If you live in Québec, try this:

C’est dans le Sac, Vin Rouge Bio du Rhône, Pont du Gard IGP (Cave des Vignerons d’Estézargues)

Packaged in a 1.5 litre wine pouch, this red blend from the Rhône Valley has enticing ripe dark plum and cherry aromas interlaced with subtle baking spice notes. The palate is smooth and generously warming, with velvety tannins. Serve slightly chilled. Stays fresh after opening for six weeks.

Where to Buy: SAQ ($29.95)

Life

The Long Awaited Master of Wine Ceremony

Master of Wine Ceremony

The phone call came on a balmy day in late August of 2020. I had been waiting for weeks. In truth, I had been waiting for years. My dream of becoming a Master of Wine began over a bottle of 1982 Château Léoville-Las Cases. This prized bottle from my father’s cellar was opened to celebrate my imminent departure for Burgundy to pursue my first wine degree.

It was 2004. My father, a great wine lover, beamed at me across the table and declared that this was just the start; that one day I would achieve the title held by the authors of his favourite wine books. I scoffed at the notion, but as the years past the idea kept rattling around in the back of my mind like some pesky pebble in my shoe.

Work, life, travel, love, the prospect of motherhood. I kept finding reasons to postpone my studies. Until, in 2014, after a four-year struggle with infertility, it was time to make some radical changes.

I finally applied to the Institute of Masters of Wine, started planning a move back to Canada, and of course, promptly found out that I was pregnant. And so, the course for the next six years of my life was set.

No photo description available.
Me attempting to study for the MW with young children at home…!

To say that I was incredibly nervous and intimidated upon arrival at my first Master of Wine student seminar is a colossal understatement. Showing up five months pregnant did little to help matters. The week took place in Rust, Austria. Every morning, my fellow 50 students and I did practice tasting exams and every afternoon we learned more about the growing, making, packaging, bottling, shipping, and selling of wine around the world.

I came away buzzing with new ideas, new friends, and acquaintances, but also awestruck at how much there is to learn about wine. Books like Stephen Skelton’s Viticulture and David Bird’s Understanding Wine Technology became my bedtime reading.

Over the next few years, I studied like a have never studied before. I rocked my baby in his little chair with one foot while blind tasting. I spent weekends learning about rootstocks and soil pH. I made dozens of recordings so that I could listen to theory notes while walking the dog or chopping onions for dinner. I bought a coravin so I could taste wines again and again.

My studies took me to wine regions across the world, and to study centres in California and England. All the while, my network of Masters of Wine and MW student relationships grew. And so did my family. A second pregnancy with a due date uncomfortably close to the second stage exams meant that I had to defer for a year. I spent 2017 fretting that I would forget all the knowledge I had worked so hard to cram into my recalcitrant brain.

I failed the tasting portion of the exam not once, but twice. My ego was badly bruised, and I started entertaining the fear that maybe I lacked some innate talent or skill and would never make it across the finish line. Perhaps all the time, the money, the stress had been for nothing?

Recovering from a blind sparkling wine tasting.

They say that pride comes before a fall, but I think it depends on its form. When I thought back to my father’s pride at that dinner table so many years before, and that of my mother and husband, who championed me every step of the way, I knew I had to keep going.

I finally passed all parts of the second stage Master of Wine exams in 2019. My sense of relief and joy was immense, as was my trepidation for the next requirement of the study program: a lengthy academic research paper.

Finding a worthy topic that can contribute to the body of knowledge on the subject, that that there is enough material to study but hasn’t already been studied to death, that meets the approval of the Institute, that you feel you can do justice to, and that actually interests you is no easy feat. At least it wasn’t in my case.

When I had found the topic, done the research, and started analyzing it, another challenge presented itself… a global pandemic! So, there I was, with three and five-year-old boys at home all day and a 10,000-word paper to write. The weight of those lonely late night writing sessions was enough to make me want to give up all over again.

Fast forward five months, and the long-awaited phone call. On the other end of the line was Adrian Garforth, Executive Director of the Institute of Masters of Wine.  After some polite chit chat, nearly drowned out by the shouts of my rowdy boys, Adrian laughed and said, “your children seem excited, which is good since there is so much to celebrate”.

Covid restrictions meant that we had to limit the festivities to our small family circle but that didn’t stop us from popping Champagne corks and dancing around the kitchen in wild abandon. It was a magical evening, with the even more exciting prospect of traveling to London for the graduation ceremony.

After 19 long months of covid variant upon loathsome variant, we were finally able to travel to London last week. The event takes place at Vintner’s Hall, the birthplace of the Masters of Wine study program nearly 70 years ago. It is a beautiful old building on the banks of the Thames, all dark wood panelling, plush carpets, and regal portraits.

Liveried trumpeters played as we made our way into the hall, to the applause of our families, friends, and fellow MWs. Though I had had many months for the news to sink in, I still found myself overcome with emotion as I made my way to the stage to receive my diploma. Knowing that my husband, mother, brother, and sister were all there to share the moment filled me with gratitude.

The Bollinger flowed freely as everyone mingled and caught up after the ceremony. Looking across the sea of happy faces it was hard to imagine the distanced, masked, isolated existence we had so recently traversed, and perhaps will again.

The memories of that night will surely stay with me for many years to come. As will every exhausting, exhilarating, overwhelming, terrifying, and jubilant step along the way.

To learn more about the Masters of Wine program, check out the video below.