1.220.000 bottles 75 cl / 105.000 bottles 37cl
10.000 bottles 1.5l/ 1.000 bottles 3l

Spicy red berry fruit aromatics of cherry and raspberry. Focused palate with a core of rich, ripe fruit, good mouthfeel, supple tannins for structure. Solid and well balanced, ready for drinking.

Full Vintage note here.

Complex aromas of earth, spice and fruit, with a solid textured palate showing red berry fruit, sweet and gamey flavors. Well balanced with a good structure and a long finish.

Read full vintage note here.

BREAST CANCER AWARENESS
March 19th is the Annual fund raising lunch at the Hotel Palace in Estoril on behalf of Laço, a Portuguese association for breast cancer awareness. We will be donating wines for this event. (Laço also have a blog and facebook page, where you can become a fan!)

MADEIRAN FLOODS
Following the devastating floods in Madeira last month, we have joined forces with our distributor in Madeira, Copo and some other wineries, to donate wines to some of the worst effected restaurants and shops, who lost much including their wine stocks in the torrential floods. We are glad to be able to help our Madeirian friends in this small way.

If you are in Évora, a must see is the lovely  Hotel M’AR De AR Aqueduto. Our old friend from Beja, Chef Antonio Nobre is the chef at this hotel and their sister hotel nearby, Hotel Muralhas. A novelty in the Alentejo is the Sushi Bar, where Chef Kenzo from São Paulo demonstrates his skills in making delicious Sushi in this video, which we enjoy afterwards paired with a glass of Chaminé Branco!

]]> http://cortesdecima.com/general/chamine-and-sushi/feed/ 0 http://cortesdecima.com/general/chamine-and-sushi/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CortesDeCima/~3/nYTrSSMX0DQ/ http://cortesdecima.com/general/a-picture-saves-a-thousand-lives/#comments Sat, 06 Mar 2010 11:28:14 +0000 Carrie http://cortesdecima.com/?p=4765 A charity auction for Haiti earthquake victims. Cortes de Cima is happy to be able to partner once again with our friends and the much respected  Rose Charities for another good cause, following the success of  BeBare, the naughtiest charity auction. Save the date! Thursday March 18th at the Milk Gallery, NY.

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