“The world knows the Beaujolais Nouveau,” says Rui Raposo, president of the municipality of Vidigueira, Portugal. It refers to cult French wine: the first of each vintage, fermented only a few weeks before its launch with a great national holiday. in November, for a reason. Its corner of the Alentejo has an equally historical and eccentric winemaking tradition, but little known outside the region.
Raposo to replace that. ” What we have is similar,” he says. “It’s top quality. People have to wait until next year. With that, we have some sustainability and we have everything the world can know.
The Vidigueira talha wine culture – Portuguese winemakers need to translate it, but if they did, it would be something like “clay pot wine” – dates back to Roman times. Historically, cellars were built with giant arched windows, through which grapes were poured into sloping ground. There they were crushed and entered holes in the middle that dropped them into the clay containers.
The carvings you see in the Alentejo don’t date back to the first century, of course. But they have still noticed generations of winemaking and have a seductive patina. So it’s tempting to look at them and say, okay, then it’s amphora wine, aged wine in clay pots. It’s a flavor that has been around since the origin of winemaking in Georgia about 8,000 years ago and has recently become fashionable around the world, with productions ranging from Australia to the United States.
This is not bad, but it is not enough. While amphora wines age in clay (often after classical stainless steel fermentation), talha wines are crazy experiments in which grapes go through their entire evolution in clay vats. Winemakers can climb stairs to succeed indoors with long paddles to move the grapes and weigh the solids that rise in a cork fermentation. But they can’t taste it and they can’t intervene. At the end of the process, they unscrew a cap, introduce a tap and fill small tasting glasses.
That is why the first tasting is important, at the beginning of November as for Beaujolais Nouveau, and more precisely on the day of the Saint-Martin dinner, some other explanation of why to celebrate, is important. It’s a surprise. Or as Talha’s winemaker, Rubén Honrado, says: “Nobody knows what he’s doing. “
He exaggerates, of course, but he is right to say that “nobody knows the secret of vinho da talha. People put grapes in the talha and wait for the magic to happen. Some opt for greater hygiene while others embrace all the nature that will make wine. They would possibly use more or less stems or none at all. The clay vessels themselves have other ages, usage amounts, and even other shapes and sizes, depending on who made them. The closest to the windows would possibly be absolutely others from those in the corner of the room. The effects are never consistent.
“There is great interest in flavoring them on November 11,” continues Honrado. “There’s one that’s the favorite, and that’s the one you share with your friends, family and neighbors. “
Now they share it with foreign visitors, thanks in part to the efforts of Raposo and his colleagues from the Rota do Vinho da Talha (Talha Wine Route) initiative. wines and the region.
Gerações da Talha
First, the Alentejo Oenology Commission created the equivalent of a DOC for local talha wines. They now have a new trendy interpretation center, complete with archival photographs, old tools, interactive exhibits, a bit of virtual reality, and audio tours in a variety of languages (including lush English with a British accent). Merchants also established the Talha Wine Route, which highlights local attractions such as the well-preserved and restored first-century Roman ruins in São Cucufate, and a number of vineyards and restaurants.
This is a component of the region’s call for popularity as intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO, which is expected to bring tourism to the region. And also bring local respect to the culture: keep in mind that videos from the performance medium are heavy for gentlemen. of a certain age, and the hope is that the new generations need to continue painting. This is all that results in paintings with another of the intangible cultural heritages of the region, the Cante Alentejano, a kind of polyphonic song.
Perhaps all this sounds too serious. Above all, the road is a lot of fun. The wines, which have the rusty color and slightly funky characteristics of orange wines, have taken a step forward to the point where they can be bottled and enjoyed year-round. Some stalls along the way are contemporary, such as this interpretation center and the bright tasting room of the Adega Cooperativa Vidigueira, the wine cooperative of the region.
Singers of Cante Alentejano in Gerações da Talha
But entering Gerações da Talha, in Vila de Frades, recalls the homonymous generations (lately it passes through the fourth, Teresa Caeiro), with its reception corridor where the walls are covered with old carvings and the arches of the ceiling are suspended with grapes, and where outdoor dinners take place at long picnic tables with singers of Cante Alentejano who laugh with their art and wine. local. They have also recently embarked on wine tourism, with tastings, picnics among centuries-old vineyards and boat trips on the nearby lake of Alqueva.
With a long family tradition, the neighboring Honrado has a winery-museum in a winery and century-old tavern, where they put beautiful tables and load them with Alentejo sausages, brand new cheeses, red meat cheeks, copious beans and other regional dishes. (They can also make an undeniable wine tasting with just a snack or two. )
A tasting in Honorado
And then there’s Adega Zé Galante, which happens not to have replaced since its namesake owner was born in this same space decades ago. He still makes wine in the talhas, just as his grandfather did in the nineteenth century, on the sides of the cozy dining room, and now also prepares soft meals and tastings for teams that assemble them in advance.
Unlike many other people along the way, Galante doesn’t speak much English. But it doesn’t matter. It has hosted foreign teams and everything is going well. Good food, wine, Portuguese hospitality and festive traditions are a universal language.