The president of the Wine Routes of Portugal, Jorge Sampaio, has followed the work of winemakers and argues that we certainly have great women behind great wines. Jorge Sampaio dedicates a text to all women stating that we are “Alma Lusa”.

As I am not a technician, or master of the chemical arts of transforming the fruit of the vine into wine, which sometimes brings me an embarrassed anguish of getting lost in more technical explanations, I constantly feel the need to discover, in each wine, its essence, its genesis, identifying its soul.

Aware that the attempt to identify the soul of a wine may seem philosophical or metaphysical, and even admitting that the simple statement, before chemists and scientists, that all molecular transformations can be reduced to a simple golden circle that a glass of wine emanates, it can reduce this thought of mine to ridiculous daydreams, or the beginning of madness.

But, convinced of my weaknesses, and driven by the desire to understand, I affirm, with the most convinced conviction, that a wine has a soul, reducing myself, in this way, to the most humble and elementary condition of a good drinker and apprentice of connoisseurs.

The soul is in the body and in the color of a wine. Marks that nature reflects on the glass, to the naked eye, in the swaying and restlessness of the liquid.

The soul is in the nose, in the aromas of the wine. In those that we feel and in others that tell us to feel and that, more or less convinced, we believe, with certainty, that they are there.

The soul is in the flavor, in the palate of those who taste it, in the sensations it causes in each of our sensors, in each of our corners of the mouth. As if the mouth had corners, the most astute thinkers will argue.

Let us feel the Soul of a Portuguese wine. Let us try, in each glass, to understand the piece of Portugal that it contains, or as wine experts prosaically call it, the Terroir of each Region.

It is this wealth of pieces, all so different, but all so close and connected, that makes Portugal one of the richest countries when it comes to wine. I would even say, the richest country in the World of Wines.

We traveled the entire country, so quickly, from Verdes to Algarve, from Beira Interior to Bairrada, in this Portugal that is so golden and that is never ashamed, nor hides behind the mountains. Because, if the People are wise, they say, very clearly, that they are in charge there.

It is from this land of contrasts – from the freshness of sparkling wines to the stewing of Madeira, reds, which give us body, to the sweetness of Porto’s, which feed our spirit – that this Portuguese Soul, which only our wines have, is built.

We have this ability to make wines that bring us, by the handful, the people of each Region, but transport us to a single and unique Soul, of being Portuguese, made by men, in a world (of wines) that has always been very much about men but, made more and more by more women, who lend, to each wine they think about, to each wine they make, their singular sensitivity, they ask, for themselves, only the recognition of being considered as equals.

Source: Liderança no Feminino