At 10 am we headed to another town in the area, Barcelos. It was a bigger city than yesterday’s, but still had a medieval downtown. They are also known for roosters. Not live one’s, but statues. There was a story about the rooster saving someone’s son as they were about to be hanged, which was quite a miracle. Years later the individual came back to the town and built a statue of a rooster.
After a short walk around town, we drove to a winery, Vinevinu. It is a new winery run by a father / son. The father has been in the wine business for some time and his son just graduated from wine school in the UK. We tasted one white in the vineyard which was really acidic. Then we went into the winery. Our guide stole some wine from the concrete egg which was really good! Unfortunately it will not be bottled for several more months. They are also experimenting with combined wood casks mixing 50% chestnut with 50% oak from different countries to see how it impacts the wine.
The owner and his some then joined us for a fantastic lunch! The chef also joined us. The first course was a type of goulash. It had different vegetables, rabbit, pork, chicken, onions, etc. the second course was a rice dish with beef. Then dessert was cheese. There were 5 different wines served. All white and different alvarinho grapes. I liked the third wine the best. A combined wine that had gone through malolactic fermentation and wine that didn’t. I also liked one that was a little sweeter as I thought it would go well with spicy food. We ended with an orange wine that reminded me of an orange dipped in butterscotch.
At 7 pm everyone got together to have a little wine and the hotel did a nice buffet. I wasn’t hungry, but did enjoy spending some time chatting with everyone.
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