Off to the Hunt!

Last weekend I attended a wine tasting class that was specifically about Portuguese wines, which is not an easy thing to find. Typically those classes tend to focus on a certain type of French wine, say, or a region of a country and its wines and, at any rate, Portuguese wines tend to be under the radar.

This one was held at Barcelona, a restaurant in West Hartford, CT, not too far from where I live. The instructor was Gretchen Thomas, the Wine and Spirits Director for the Barcelona Restaurant Group, and she did a fantastic job.

Amazingly, she even did a good job on pronunciation. I was prepared for the usual mispronunciation of the letter “J,” for example. Most people assume it is spoken the way it is in Spanish, where the J is turned into an H sound. In Portuguese it makes a “ZHH” sound.

Once I was in Blue Apron, which is a fancy charcuterie in Park Slope, Brooklyn, where I used to live and they actually had the delicious São Jorge cheese. It’s from the island of the same name, which is one of the Azores and when I traveled there I had it several times. I said to the guy behind the counter, “Wow, I can’t believe you have this!”

“Oh, Yes, the São HOR-hay, “ he said. “It’s quite good.”

“Yes, I’ve had it in the Azores, but it’s pronounced São ZHORJE,” I said.

“Hor-hay,” he said back.

“In Portuguese they don’t pronounce the letter J like an H,” I insisted.

“How much of it would you like?” he asked, ending the conversation while simultaneously not acknowledging my expertise on the subject. I’d like to say I stopped going there, but I’m afraid I am completely unable to boycott good food sources.

It is conversations such as those that make me the fan of wine drinking that I am.

I am certainly no expert on Portuguese wines, myself, but I’ve probably had more of it than most people I know. I have been to Portugal many times and I have always had good wine for cheap. And when I say cheap, I mean CHEAP. Over there a good bottle of red from the Alentejo cooperativas could cost about $3.00.

I am also no expert as regards wine tasting in general. In fact I must here confess that I really don’t understand wine tasting (although I find the idea of it thrilling). For example, I watched our instructor in fascination as she talked about a certain wine, swished it around in her mouth and then spit it into a cup. This is something I never do with wine. I drink it.

I am able, also, to see the differences in wine viscosity, and even to vaguely understand what about the wine making process causes different thicknesses and colors. But darned if I can figure out what the heck difference it makes to me.

I am getting better at discerning the previously mysterious interpretations of wine flavors, though. Whereas before the notion that a wine might have undertones of blackberry or coffee bean, or (shudder) freshly cut grass was gibberish to me, I can now detect hints of other flavors. Just not freshly cut grass.

One of the most interesting aspects of the class was about Port wine (Vinho do Porto in Portuguese). Port has a very complex and fascinating history that is intertwined with the history of merchant shipping, European politics and culture. When I think of Port, I think of a bunch of Victorian men sitting around in the smoking room after dinner with cigars and sipping a glass of fine Port, whilst chatting about the day’s hunt.

I mirror that practice myself, down to the last detail. I sit in my living room, sipping a ruby red glass of Port. I just delete the cigar, since I don’t smoke and skip the part about discussing the hunt, since I don’t do that either.  Also I am the only one drinking, since my daughter is 17. In my case it’s more like just sipping the Port—period.

It was very cool to finally figure out the differences between all of the types of Port. Tawny, Ruby, Ten-Year, etc. were all labels that I did not previously understand. If you want to learn the differences too, just click here to read about it in my About.com article on the topic.

And how about that fox, eh?