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Erica Nonni flanked by Jeff Ghi and Pedro Lopes Vieria

Welcome to the Wine Media Guild’s first tasting of dry Portuguese reds!

Lucky members of the Wine Media Guild were greeted by dozens of bottles of delicious dry red wines from Portugal, thanks to the exhaustive help of Erica Nonni of Colangelo & Partners as well as Jeff Ghi, distributor for Quevedo in NYC, and Pedro Lopes Viera, sales manager for Esporao in America.

Several other distributors donated wine, which created possibly the best tasting of dry reds from Portugal in the history of New York.

Beyond the quality - and affordability - of the dry reds, we experienced some well crafted crisp whites with our first course during lunch.

The profile for most of the whites was very dry and focused with intense minerality. The reds varied a bit, yet one could detect black licorice (the braided kind) and red cherry.

Jeff  Ghi gave a very distinctive talk about the history of Port ... fascinating, actually. He is a distributor for Quevedo,  a small family owned winery that found its start in the late 1970s and perfected its craft in 1991. Today Quevedo has an international reach internationally, allocating greater than 90% of their production to countries like Brazil, Holland, US and China.  It specialize in all varieties of Port along with a start into Douro wines.

Pedro Lopes Viera gave an equally fascinating talk about the grapes of Portugal, and the terroir. His history is also interesting. Pedro created the first exclusive Portuguese wine agency in Toronto Canada, representing a total of 20 top wineries from Portugal – part of why he was invited to work for Esporao. The Esporao project was was created in 1973, based in Alentejo, and has won many awards.  They are successful in many countries around the wor;d, with a special emphasis on Brazil, Canada, and the USA. Right now, he is a student in the diploma program from the Wine and Spirits Educational Trust.

Oh, and this just in from Christian Seely about the harvest in Portugal at Quinta do Noval

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