Alentejo Seminar

I had a chance to attend Alentejo Seminar this week.

Alentejo is in the south east of Portugal. This area is also known for its cork trees.
The climate is Mediterranean and the land is relatively flat, but eight sub-regions have small climatic differences, therefore producing different styles of wine.

Grapes used for white wine are Arinto, Antao Vaz, Roupeiro, etc. Grapes for red wine are Aragonez (Tempranillo), Alicante Bouschet, Touriga Nacional, etc.
You can find many indigenous varieties here.

After the lecture, we got to taste wines, three whites and nine reds.
It's from south, so I expected their wines to be very ripe and big, and high alcohol could be a little harsh.

Actually, the wines were more elegant side.
Fruit were ripe but not over-baked, and there were flower and mineral.
Texture was soft and fluid, and it became even softer with food.

This is definitely a hidden gem.
I'm sure that the wines we tried this day were carefully selected good-quality wines, and I don't know if table wines from this region could be also good, but most of Alentejo wines imported to US are PDO and PGI, so we only have chance to see these wines anyway.

Wine is very popular drink: there are so many wines and so many information about wine.
This is good but I sometimes worry that everything about wine has been searched and there are nothing more to explore, so when I encounter these unknown gems, I really get excited, not just by the wine itself, but also by the possibility of wine.