Backing the Booze

For a recovering news addict, the daily barrage of bad news breaks over me like the Atlantic waves on our wild west Portuguese coast.

The inundation of daily briefings, updates and newsletters which arrive from the various trusted outlets from different sides of the widening political divide are a deluge to duck below, wait out and then resurface in calmer waters.

Of course, the next swell is already building...it won’t be long before another crest crashes over.

Take your eye off it and you’ll be washing-machined in a tumbling turmoil through the surf and delivered prostrate on the beach.

The game is trying not to get washed up by this relentless surge of warmongering, right-wing rhetoric and utter indecency (mostly coming from America)...and the distasteful giving of tributes to pander to a deeply flawed king.

(Really, María Corina Machado? You really think he’ll give you Venezuela now he’s styled himself as acting president).

BUT...occasionally something pops up which makes riding the swell worthwhile.

This week it was a nicely written piece in The Economist about how the business of wine reflects changes in society.

It’s about isolation, loneliness...and the lubricating antidote which oils the wheels of social interaction.

It struck a real chord because it falls in line with what we’re trying to do here: bringing interesting people together with a glass of wine, sharing a meal and a story.

It reflects what we love about wine, and how it helps put storytelling at the heart of our off-grid lodge.

Hopefully this link will take you to the full article, but if not, you’ll get the gist as I’ve decided to pull out some quotes, tease out a few thoughts and pick it all apart.

Of course, I could have chosen mixed martial arts for my news metaphor, which for some reason I’m inundated with every time I dip into some passive doom scrolling, alongside an inundation of rugby tries, woodworking demonstrations, DIY tips and Australian dad jokes.

I guess it could be a lot worse.

Algorithms have become our personalised shadows following us around the metaverse like the daemons of the Philip Pulman fantasy novels and TV show His Dark Materials.

But nevertheless I am slightly fascinated by the surprise flying kicks, back-handed punches and sneaky use of elbows-to-the-head in the MMA clips...yet another good allegory for world politics.

Talking of inundations, we’ve been having an amazing amount of rain – the 200,000 litre rainwater tank is full to almost overflowing, the lake’s outflow stream is back and we now know exactly where to put the drainage channels in the new vineyard.

Although I’m still not wearing a jumper (I am from Newcastle don’t forget), the chillier temperatures mean we can put on a lovely fire, reach for a warming Alentejo red and (with thanks to the anonymous Economist author of “Falling wine sales reflect a lonelier and more atomised world”) let the story begin...

“The long, dark days can lower people’s moods”

On the one hand it’s a great idea giving up booze for January, but on the other it’s a terrible time to deny yourself something nice to warm up the longer nights...especially when the act of drinking takes you to a nice cosy bar.

But straight off the back of the festive season with bulging belt buckles it seems like the right thing to do (“the exhortations of do-gooders to forgo...” as the writer elegantly puts it!)

Ana and I have cut back this month...but more in the realisation that running a tourism lodge around wine and joining in with every guest is going to kill us pretty quickly.

I’ve never suffered from the SAD (seasonal affective disorder) short days depression, but that’s mostly because I’ve organised my life around living in places where it’s still warm and sunny most of the time.

SADly alcohol sales are on the wane through a combination of a GenZers drinking a lot less (presumably as a form of revolution against the grown-ups who set such a bad example during their childhood) and the various studies citing the health detriments of booze, but the Economist interviewees say there’s more to it than that.

“Wine’s decline reflects something deeper: a fraying of the social fabric that once held Western societies together.”

That’s what Andrés Pérez thinks.

His family runs the Alyan vineyard in Chile (which looks amazing by the way) where “Wine tasting...is more a carefully curated social event than a lesson in tannins.”

I said exactly the same thing presenting this week’s wine story-tasting for 43 people...well, perhaps not quite as eloquently or directly, but it’s what I meant... it’s less about fancy language and more about enjoying what you like.

Yes, you read it correctly, wine tasting...for 43...that was a first!

We had a fantastic group staying on their corporate retreat, or ‘off-site’ as we’ve learned is the new word for it.

In collaboration with nearby yoga centre Orada (and with huge thanks to David for asking us to be involved), we hosted the Verto Eduction management team for the week.

Our solar system once again brilliantly navigated a full house despite the rain as the study abroad programme staff gathered from all over the world and cosied up in the Clubhouse to hear a little Portuguese history through wine.

We treated them to our favourite Vicentino white blend, a Gerações de Talha introduction to Alentejo’s amphora wine world, some Esporão Reserva 2022 and Mouchão’s stunning 2017 Alicante Bouschet.

Alyan apparently “once offered hour-long tasting sessions. Now they last four. By the end of the visit, strangers are swapping numbers and shaking hands.”

While I didn’t bang on about Alentejo wine for four hours the volume of conversation certainly increased as we ticked off the wines.

“Anthropologists see the decline in communal eating as part of a broader social unravelling.”

We’ve loved hosting a family-style meal around a long table on the terrace when we’ve had the time in this first year of being open.

(Running this place is sometimes a bit like the Trump presidency...it feels like a lot longer, but it still hasn’t been a full year!)

It’s been great to bring people together over a fish braai or some grilled black pork with lashings of Alentejo wine – ideally from a flagon – to get the conversations going.

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“People across the rich world increasingly live, and eat, alone. As a result, more people now eat and unwind in front of screens.”

Now that’s an easy one,

We encourage guests to the valley to let their phones have a holiday too: to switch off and take it easy...ideally from the comfort of a locked box (the phones, not the guests).

Phil Davies – friend and BBC cameraman from Nairobi always swore we needed to go on safari at least once every six weeks to give our eye muscles a workout.

After all the close up reading we do in front of screens, he argued, we periodically need to scan a distant horizon to maintain the flexibility to switch to long vision.

It’s also great while on safari with friends to be practiced enough to know the difference between a lion and a rock that looks like a lion at 400m.

Our views are vast, there’s a old windmill on a hill to focus on and we do have a few rocks that look like Iberian lynx...and of course a big library of books and shelves of games for quiet days.

But of course off-grid doesn’t mean always offline as there’s a need to keep in touch.

“Generation Z...drink differently, increasingly seeking out quality and novelty.”

Tick.

Of the 350 different grapes grown in Portugal, 250 are indigenous.

And nothing says wine novelty more than Antão Vaz and Arinto, Trincadeira, Tinta Miúda and the two Touriga’s (Nacional and Franca).

Quality and novelty are a draw with young drinkers on the basis that the reason the hipster burnt their mouth on coffee was because they wanted to drink it before it was cool (buh-buhm-tshing).

Alentejo is of course home to the original natural wine – talha, or amphora wine made the way the Romans made it...and made that way in a few places ever since.

And it’s perhaps the main reason our lower, or Baixo Alentejo, has been awarded European city of wine for 2026.

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“For some people, drinking is an isolating addiction. But for most it is a social indulgence. And that, increasingly, is what people are missing.”

I’ve always loved a bit of social indulging. I have been known to socially overindulge, but only occasionally.

And that’s the inspiration around a few of the things we’re planning for this year. The main one is the Wine Retreat we’re doing with the Hutchins Wine Academy in May...people are signing up for that already and it’ll be a lot of fun…there are still places left, so join us!

Seventy wines, some amazing meals and winery adventures and you leave it tasting wine like a sommelier!

Our Detox/Retox days of exercise then alcohol are perfect for February and March when the shoulder devils and angels both get their way...on the same day.

And that plan to run a regular open house wine tasting every Friday is taking a step closer to becoming a thing.

We might even host something fun on Sunday February 1st...a sort of goodbye dry and welcome back wet rest-of-the-year...let us know if you’re interested.

The EU is providing “funds to uproot grapevines in order to reduce the bloc’s wine glut.”

Of course they are.

So obviously we’re planting half a hectare while everyone’s getting money for pulling it up.

Speaking of which, I really must get my wellies on, take to the field and start counting up how many plants we need...I don’t trust my geometry (or ChatGPT’s).