FOTORELIEF, an all-volunteer organization and a veteran of fundraising auctions, and A Milk Gallery Project in New York organizes “A Picture Saves A Thousand Lives” silent photo auction event to contribute to the Haitian earthquake relief effort through ROSE Charities. Over 100 of the world’s most respected fashion and fine art photographers are each donating a photograph to be exhibited and auctioned off that evening, with the opening bids ranging from $300 to $10,000. Invited guests - art patrons, collectors, celebrities, and the fashion & fine art photography world elite - will have the opportunity to take home an important work of art, while making an invaluable contribution to the relief effort. As in the earlier events, we will be donating Chaminé to be served during the evening.  All of the proceeds from the auction will go to ROSE Charities, to provide long-term care and rehabilitation for the survivors of the Haitian earthquake.

Noot Seear, international top model, actress and President of ROSE Charities US commented, “After the attention wanes and the media has decamped, there will still be years of rehabilitation and reconstruction needed for the Haitian people. The doctors, therapists and volunteers that generously donate their time and purpose, through ROSE Charities, have a history of that dedication.” Foto below with Noot Seear from BeBare Oct 2008 in NY.

Early March is the time of budbreak in the vineyard. 12 March, 26 February, 2 March, 14 March are dates which stand out in the record book from past bud breaks from past vintages. The earliest varieties are Alicante Bouschet and the whites, i.e. Verdelho or Viognier. We are still waiting….and watching……..and waiting for it to stop raining……

To date 1171 mm rain has fallen this winter, more than twice the average annual rainfall, with 323 mm having fallen in February alone. Damns are overflowing, rivers are swollen, fields are flooded. And still it keeps raining. Farmers are crying about their soaked wheat fields and pastures, but luckily the dormant vines don’t mind standing with their feet wet.

Vineyard work is cumbersome when the vineyard is one big muddy quagmire. Luckily we got an early start to our pruning already last December, and the last vines are now finally pruned and ready for their vinous reawakening. While we are waiting, we are treated to the sight of the fields bursting with spring wildflowers in yellow, white and violet hues.

One of the major changes deals with allowing cross blending, that is allowing the addition of max.15% of wine from another region. Alentejo, in the short-sighted desire to protect our own grapegrowers, will not be adopting this new change.  Another change now allows for irrigation in the vineyard. This might be new for France, but here in dry Alentejo, we have been allowed to irrigate for years. Initially it was under the guise of ‘experimental’ irrigation, the irony being that all grapegrowers in Alentejo were ‘experimenting’ at the same time. More recently there was a general amnesty allowing irrigation, with the omniscient authorities guiding the grapegrowers when to turn on and off the taps. Luckily with the new rules, this charade no longer needs to be played, with this decision rightfully left to the grapegrower himself.

What will these new changes mean for us? Not much of anything really, unless you scrutinize the fine print on our labels. Most winedrinkers are not likely to have noticed that where we used to write ‘Vinho Regional Alentejo’, we now write ‘Vinho Regional Alentejano’. No, it is not a typo error!  Cortes de Cima being ‘lowly’ Vinho Regional producers were forbidden to defile the word ‘Alentejo’ by mentioning it anywhere on our labels, front or back! Only the ’superior’ quality DOC producers can use the term ‘Alentejo’.    Now, with these latest changes from Brussels, the ‘Vinho Regional Alentejano’ will be replaced by ‘IG Alentejano‘ which falls under the new European designation ‘PGI’ (or ‘IGP’) or Protected geographical indication.

As we are by choice not DOC producers, (too many restrictions in the vineyard re. varieties, trellis systems, etc.), we won’t dwell on this category, except to mention that they will be regrouped as DO Alentejo, under the new ‘PDO’ (or ‘DPO’) umbrella - Protected designation of origin. The lofty idea is that only PDO combines regional typicity with quality.

Last, and considered to be least (or lowest) we have the old ‘Vinho de Mesa’, which is the designation of our entry level brand ‘Courela‘. Under the changes, this will be called just plain ‘Vin’, ‘Vino’ or ‘Vinho’ in Portuguese. The long awaited changes here, is the permission to finally write the variety and vintage on the label. For example, we will now be able to officially reveal the true composition of i.e. our current release of ‘Courela’, a blend of Aragonez, Syrah and Touriga Nacional from the 2008 vintage, information which we used to be forbidden to divulge. Should the wine drinker not be allowed to know what he is drinking? Finally some common sense seen here!

Further references:  Harper’s Jeremy Beadles, Idiot’s Guide to the new European Wine Regulations; Robert Joseph, The ABC of Wine Regulations, Meininger’s 6/09

Obviously a winery our size, can’t do all the wine fairs - it’s a question of time as well as costs. So one of the fairs that we exclude is SISAB, an annual export food and wine trade fair, which took place in Lisbon this week. Deciding to take a day off and see SISAB as a visitor, I had a good chance to go around and try other wines.  The first wine I saw when I walked in was a wine I just had to try, as it was from the island of Graciosa, Azores.  Pedras Brancas, a light refreshing white blend of Arinto, Boal and Verdelho.

Graciosa is not just any Azorean island to me! It is the island from where my great grandfather Francisco Correia Sarmento set off in a sailboat in 1888 at the age of 16 with so many other Azorean migrants of the time to New Bedford. On Ellis Island  his name was anglicized to Frank Courier Simonds, before he moved west to Colton, California to practice his craft as a barber. He cut the hair of many a legendary cowboy, names such as Wyatt and Virgil Earp, (the Earp Brothers of the OK Corral fame). To be sure, he must have had a steady hand, as he lived to a ripe old age of 95, spending his last years once again near the ocean (the Pacific), in an Azorean enclave in San Diego, California.

Graciosa Island (literally “graceful” or “enchanting” in Portuguese) is the northernmost of the Central Group of islands in the Azores. Only 10 km in length and 7 km in width it is also the smallest island in the group, with a population of 4780. If you haven’t been there yet, the Azores is definitely worth a visit!  Our family trip in 2008 was a flurry of activities including hiking on volcanoes and swimming and boating with whales and dolphins. If you go there, try the local wines like Pedras Brancas above, from the reawakening Azorean wine industry with it’s world heritage vineyards. Or you can drink Chaminé!  Our wines are available throughout the archipelago. Some references are Sol*Mar and Master Cash on the island of Sao Miguel, or the  Supermercados Guarita and Cash Emater on the island of Terceira.

Meet Anna, Karen’s daughter, the painter of the beautiful illustrations used on our labels and a successful fine artist living in Copenhagen. (If you visit us, don’t forget to see all the original labels illustrations, which are hanging in our tasting room!) Anna has exhibited in the Artists Autumn Exhibition, Den Frie, and is being represented by Galerie Gerly in Copenhagen, Gallerie Knud Grothe in Charlottenlund and Riverside Gallery in London. Annas work has also been featured in the annual Art Compilation Dansk Kunst and in the  New York Art Magazine.

No one can speak about Anna better than herself, so let’s turn the floor over to her!  -
“Exploration of the flower universe is the continuing theme that runs throughout my work. My painting express and reveal the inner and outer world of nature, focusing on the aura of the flower.

The strongest source of inspiration for my paintings came from my early childhood experiences of Malaysia, a time of colour, texture and composition.

I was born in Kerteminde, a small town on Fyn, Denmark. However most of my childhood was spent in Malaysia untill I moved to England in 1978. After my education in the Fine Arts in 1994 I moved back to Denmark where I now live with my husband and two beautiful children.

With a father as a planter and a mother from the design world, I am blessed with a colourful and adventurous life which has directed me in my journey as a painter.

In my years in England I studied under the traditional academic education system. Which included a Foundation Course in the Fine Arts at Oxford and a BA HONs Degree at Falmouth School Of Arts in Cornwall, England. It was during my last academic year at Falmouth where I began to work with my fascination with the Flower Universe.

I work with lyrical elements of water and earth, light and space. Expressing myself through the use of oil and colour to create layer upon layer of depth.

I see the flower not simply as a whole, but as a mass of different particles and colour. To me the Flower represents the very essence of the soul. An expression of sexuality and beauty. The universe within the universe of the Flower.
”  -

Thank you Anna, for sharing your inspiration with us here, and for your beautiful illustrations which turn every bottle of Cortes de Cima wine and olive oil into living works of art on your own dining table!

So what is the Adegga site? Adega with one ‘g’ is portuguese for winery, a spanish bodega.  But this 2 ‘g’ Adegga is  an online wine community, a Facebook for wine buffs, created by 3 young Portuguese IT geeks/entrepreneurs/wine lovers -  Andre Cid, Emidio Santos and Andre Ribeirinho, the later who has just been recognized by Portugal’s leading daily newspaper, DN as the Wine Personality of the Year due to these innovations.

Adegga’s vision “is to take the complexity out of wine and allow people to discover wines based on other people’s choice.” As with Facebook, you can make friends (drinking buddies), follow what your friends think about the wines they are drinking (in Facebook talk- ’stalk’ them), and add your own comments about the wines you drink.  It is also a good tool to organize your notes, to help you to keep track of the wines you have tasted, and the wines you have in your cellar, or the wines you are curious to try (like an Amazon wish list).  You can also track producers (like Cortes de Cima!) to know when we release new wines and where you can buy them. Or follow wine shops to know when they make promotions.  Sounds pretty nifty and useful, doesn’t it? That’s cause it is!

Adegga is not the only social wine site around, but it is the only site using AVINs at the moment, but that is likely to change when the other’s follow suite.  Other sites include Snooth,Cellartracker and Cork’d . Some of them are linked with the tasting note database of renowned wine journalists such as Jancis Robinson’s purple pages.  Some of them also allow the user to connect their own Facebook and Twitter profiles.  These are all useful features, and are likely to be standard on most of the sites (including Adegga) sooner rather than later.

Wine lovers are discovering new wine brands through these sites. They are noticing what other people are drinking and base their purchasing decision on their ‘drinking buddies’ reviews.  Wine writers are also keeping their eyes on the sites and noticing the wines that are most talked about. According to Janet Pagano of Ovid Winery in Napa,  it was early buzz on wine boards that generated brisk sales for Ovid’s first vintage and obliged critics like  Wine Spectator’s James Laube to review the wine. “The people evaluated the wine before the critics, in a manner of speaking.”   Robert Parker and WS move over, the power of the citizen wine critic is here to stay!