My experience with Portuguese wine until a week ago was primarily from my teenage years when a Portuguese family across the street from my parent’s house would make wine every year and would deliver half a dozen jugs of the stuff to our doorstep, at which point my Dad would give the man bushel baskets of tomatoes from our garden.
This exchange was more in the name of neighbourliness than in securing goods of equal value and quality, for even to our untrained palates, the neighbour’s wine was pretty bad. For some reason, I continued to believe that all Portuguese wine was of similar quality and it really wasn’t until I showed up at the Wines of Portugal Trade Tasting at the Fairmont Royal York on June 3rd that I realized I had been missing out.