In Portugal you find tradition and innovation side by side. Many of the wineries are recent and with leading edge technology, but that does not prevent them from sometimes treading the grapes by foot. The traditional style of Portuguese wines has been generally replaced by a decidedly modern winemaking style. The best producers build on tradition, e.g. by using Portuguese grape varieties, and use modern technology to make fruity and very drinkable wines, and certainly some very high quality cuvees.




Our destination on this tour is the Alentejo, the country’s biggest wine region.

Alentejo extends over almost one third of Portugal, but it has only 4% of the population. In other words, it is not crowded but a vast and open landscape with a very special charm. Lush and green in springtime, dryer and more yellow tints in autumn. It is also the world’s most important origin of cork – it is covered with cork oak, where there is no vines or pine trees. You also find quite a few black pigs – a superb Alentejano culinary speciality – rummaging under to oak trees for acorns.

This is where the new trend for high quality wine started in Portugal, a few decades ago, and the producers have since been consistently winning trophies in international wine competitions. Our tour will give you a good insight in the wines of the regions and the trends for Portuguese quality wines.

The trip starts in Lisbon where we stay in a centrally located hotel the first night, and also the last. The two other nights we spend in the middle of the Alentejo region, a couple of hours’ drive from Lisbon, in the historic town of Evora, one of the UNESCO World Heritage sites. They have an ancient Roman temple, medieval monasteries, and beautiful renaissance buildings. We stay at the very nice four-star Cartuxa hotel, modern and spacious in the town centre. They also have a good restaurant, a cozy bar and an outside pool.

You will also get to know the Portuguese cuisine: the black pig from Alentejo, barbequed or the delicious dry-cured pata negra hams, wild boar that has fed on the acorns in the forests, local cheeses from goat or sheep milk, olives and olive oils from the Alentejano varieties, sometimes grown by the wine producers themselves. We will have many opportunities to taste the cuisine in the restaurants or at some of the wine producers’ where we will have some of the lunches.

For full details of the program visit http://www.bkwine.com/wine_tours/wine_tours.htm

You can watch videos from previous tours and interviews with winemakers on the BKWine TV channel on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/bkwine