Take a walk on the seaside

Vila Nova de Milfontes and the beach in their morning glory.

Presidential elections & wine selections

Life is about choices – you choose well and good things come your way, you choose badly and…well you move on and choose something else. Eventually.

Today I chose. In the morning I chose to elect a presidential candidate to head up our country for the next couple of years.  In the evening I chose a particular red wine.

The process is similar – you have a list, you make your selection and you wait for the results. You’ll rejoice if you made the right choice,  you’ll be disappointed if you haven’t. Where it differs is that with wine you choose a bottle, open it and if it disappoints,  you can just open another one. In politics, you chose your candidate, wait for him to be elected and then for him to deliver; and if he disappoints you’ll have to stick with him for the next few years. There is no going to the shop and getting a different one on the spot.

My list this morning had ten candidates and I hope my choice will come through. My list this evening had two candidates:  Ossa 2014 (Trincadeira, Castelao and Aragonez grapes) by Roquevale and Folha da Vinha Reserva  2014 (Aragonez and Syrah) by Terras d’Alter.

Folha da Vinha Reserva 2013

Ossa Tinto 2014

I voted for the Ossa. Its label shows a rare plant that grows in Serra d’Ossa, a hill in the outskirts of Redondo in upper Alentejo, where I spent a night last summer in a convent-turned-hotel.  A lovely place. Sadly the same cannot be said of the wine. Just…too standard. It lacked personality and taste.

I swiftly moved on to my second candidate and cracked open the Folha da Vinha. A slightly better choice and one I could toast with. You see, this wasn’t my first time electing wine but it was my first time voting in Portuguese elections. Had to drink to that!

 

Notebooks for grape notes

Went shopping for notebooks. Shop had ran out. So I bought wine.

Just an average Tuesday…

Got up, shower, got dressed, black mean Nespresso machine. Quick meeting near the beach turns into a two hour vis-a-vis. Ran home for business call (couldn’t steal neighbour’s bike as had flat tyre …).  Place another call to order my lunch at nearby HS Pasta & Pizza Restaurant.

Take stuff to my local warehouse, otherwise know as my mum’s loft. Driver is not a delivery firm but sister, whose car I also use to transport my recycling to the recycling bin somewhere in the village.

Finish lunch in my sister’s garden with my little nephew and the family dog, a monster of an English Boxer who sits in front of me salivating and dribbling until I gave him a bit of my prawn and cheese pizza rolls. It sounds disgusting  but he is a sweet dog. He can also kill you in two seconds but that’s another story.

After lunch espresso is at my cousin’s café near the main fish and veg market.  The café is empty bar her partner who was sitting at one of the tables building a miniature fishing boat…obviously.

Supermarket run means I can get some tinto.

Home. Wine al fresco. Start work at 4 pm. Finish work at 9 pm. Wine indoors. Dinner is quick cook spaghetti with a drizzle of olive oil, olives and Parmiggiano served with a glass of Marques de Borba 2014, a lovely blend of Alicante Bouschet, Aragonez, Trincadeira and Touriga Nacional grapes.

Day is over. Oh yes, and the sun was shining. How was your Tuesday?

Oh wine, how I love thee…

A glass of tinto a day keeps the doctor away.

As we near the end of the seventh day of the new year (seven being a lucky number et al) I thought it a good time to share some of the wines drank by yours truly in the year just gone, or rather in the couple of months just gone.

They are all Portuguese and all red and mostly all from Alentejo.

Alentejo is unknowingly one of the best wine producing regions in the world.  But don’t take my word for it. Get yourself to the nearest shop and buy some.

Whilst you do that, I will pour myself a little glass of the Syrah by Cortes de Cima..

Happy tinto drinking!

Going home. Staying home?

After more than half my life living in London, I decided to return home to Portugal and to the little fishing village I was born in. I’d been thinking about this for a while so when redundancy came around it was more than a silver lining in my very grey cloud.  I was tired of corporate life,  tired of my four hour daily commute travelling to a job I didn’t care much for and frankly, I was tired of being tired.

The prospect of living by the seaside with every day sunny blue skies was all I could think of. Alas, I packed the entire contents of my flat and a quarter of a century of London living into a big van and shipped it over to Alentejo. I bid goodbye to my friends, to my partner, to the city I most love in the world and came home.

I have now been home for six months. It feels like I have been ( I am) on a permanent holiday. I am surrounded by nature, the sun is always shining, I have the sea and the beach on my doorstep, my family is close by and I drink great wine every day.  Life is good. Or is it?

I came home to stay home. Sort things out, get a little biz going, get my partner to move over and together make a bit of cash to enjoy the simple things of life. To escape the craziness, the stress, the crowds and the expense of big city living. To be happy.

 I am enjoying being home and I have been fortunate to be busy with a bit of freelance work.  And Vila Nova de Milfontes, truth be said, is more than a little dormant in the winter months, but there is potential despite all the naysayers.

We shall see. The new year is here. There are projects to finish, plans to make, decisions to take and more wine to be drank – more of the latter, later. And for now I am staying home.