European Wine Bloggers Conference

Editor’s Note: On Sunday, November 1st, EWBC participants will have the option of choosing from 1 of 3 different wine roadtrips. Each option will highlight a different Portuguese wine region and its wines, allowing you time in the field to ask questions of the winemaker’s themselves. Over the course of the next few weeks, we’ll be publishing information from each of the sponsors, who will not only give you background on who they are, but what makes their wine roadtrip unique to them. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to put them in the comment’s section below.

Please note that we will have a sign-up page in the coming month that will let you choose from the trips available.

Amorim is the world’s largest natural cork company, selling three billion closures every year to thousands of wineries in all continents. That may sound mammoth, but with 468 million Euros in annual sales, we are a tiny speck when compared to what some plastic and aluminum companies can sell. As such, we try to make sure the closure debate continues to move away from the one-sided, almighty “I can deliver perfection in this world” initial phase to a fact-based approach, bringing the debate to more rational levels and leveling the playing field.

Amorim has been a supporter of the conference since the very first edition of the EWBC and have never doubted that Ryan, Gabriella and the whole team behind that original Rioja event, were right in identifying the blogosphere as a key medium going forward. As mentioned before, we need to level the playing field when discussing wine closures, and the blogosphere is the great equalizer.

We are opening the Amorim doors to opinion makers that have often discussed wine closures but, in many cases, have not had the chance to collect first-hand, critical information about cork and cork forests. We will visit cork forests where Amorim sources its raw material from, follow the material through different closure production steps, including visiting the world’s largest wine stopper manufacturing plant, and finally, talk to the people that make this entire process happen. In addition, we’ll taste some delicacies from those cork forests while sipping some local wine. So we are taking the whole gang onto a bus for an encompassing and informative visit, while having the first closure debate on wheels. We want that debate to be no-holds barred; consequently, bring all of your questions, concerns and confusions!

9h00 – Pick up at VIP Grand Lisboa Hotel

10h00 – Visit Lagoalva (Cork Forest and Estate)
Its long history as a wine producer can be seen from the fact that in 1888 it was present at the Portuguese Industrial Exhibition with 600 wine casks.

The estate, which formerly belonged to the 2nd Duke of Palmela, has passed to his descendants and is now the property of Sociedade Agrícola da Quinta da Lagoalva de Cima, S.A. The 4th Duke of Palmela introduced horses and bulls to the estate in 1909. The estate’s Lusitano horses were bred from brood mares of the National Stud (Coudelaria Nacional), later improved with the use of stallions from the stud owned by Manuel Tavares Veiga.

12h30 – Lunch at Lagoalva with a Tejo D.O.C. region’s wine tasting
The Portuguese Government has announced the new D.O.C. region of wine production. Tejo is the a new region according to the Portuguese Ministry of Agriculture. The new region is a requalification of the former  Ribatejo region (now  Tejo).  The new Tejo region will offer wines called Vinho Regional Tejo. And, it will offer six sub-regions Almeirim, Cartaxo, Chamusca, Coruche, Santarém and Tomar. Tejo has 20,000 metric acres of wines growth, offering about  10 million certified bottles a year.

14h00 – Visit to AI Coruche
In this unit, as large as several football fields, huge quantities of harvested cork planks are stored for seasoning, right before cork initiates its production processing. At this recently-inaugurated plant, you will be able to see first-hand some of the quality measures designed and implemented by Amorim to produce a high quality product as demanded by the market.

15h15 – Return to hotel