"Wine Time"

"Wine Time" is something I (try to) encourage (some might say enforce) in my own household, with some success, and also when I'm out with friends and I've either brought a good bottle of wine, or bought one from the restaurant's wine list. Even "not so good" and "no so expensive" wines deserve, I think, their 2 minutes of concentration.

I know, I'm a horrible person.


Essentially "Wine Time" is quite simple - it's 2 minutes (only 2 minutes, who can begrudge that?) when you try to concentrate only on the wine - without distractions.

• You don't chat except about the wine.
• You don't watch the telly (even if Benfica are playing).
• You don't listen to music.
• You don't pick at the entrées.
• You don't look at the menu.
• You don't Facebook, or twoot, or twit, or instagroove, or text, or do any of those supposedly "social" things on your phones.

You try to concentrate only on the wine.

Just for 2 minutes.

Why?
I've found that, if you don't, it's just so very easy to sip, and drink, and quaff and not really notice what the wine actually tastes like and then suddenly it's gone. You think you probably enjoyed it, but you can't really remember.

Why?
Quite a lot of work goes into making that bottle of wine...
Back in 2004 (today's wine, as I write this, is a 2004) people went out into the fields and they picked grapes, quite probably by hand, quite possibly at night, maybe in high temperatures. These grapes were taken, possibly up a steep hill, to some form of transport and thence to a sorting station where someone sorted the grapes. Then they were carefully squished, fermented, racked, left to sleep, blended, bottled, labelled, packaged, transported and only after all that did they end up, as a "bottle of wine", on the shelf where you bought it.

Given all this work, not to mention the hard earned euros you've paid, I just happen to think that 2 minutes isn't too much time to give to that bottle of wine.

Vinhos Sogrape - Terra Franca - 2008

I've been to web sites, and blogs, which posted seemingly endless notes about wines which had, as far as I could tell, very little to commend them. Frankly I couldn't see the point, and I stopped reading them.
So I decided with my little cyber-effort here to adopt the Confucian approach "Speak only if it improves upon silence" - you'll see notes only about wines that are special in some way or other.

There's an old expression of which I'm sure you're aware - "you get what you pay for". In the wine world, as in most places, this is largely true - but once in a while you find a wine down on the bottom shelf (although, strictly speaking, this particular example was on a middle shelf), that's way better than its price tag would lead you to believe.

This I bought in Continente this morning - when I see a wine with some bottle age I'm generally willing to give it a go - with no expectations - but this surprised me with its delicacy (which is very different to frailty). When I'm next there, if they still have it, I'll score a few more, even without the discount - there are times when a wine such as this is just the ticket.

4 hour decant. 12.5%.
This was 1.99 euros before the 15% discount and, for that price, this is pretty good - sure, it's "vinho da mesa", but it's not aggressive, as cheapies often are - red fruits, nice balance, supple - fair finish with a background hint of sour.
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