Four Querido Hotels pour their own wine
In the Alentejo this year they picked 85,600kg of grapes by hand. In Comporta the bar team brewed beer from rice grown down the road. In Ravello the white is named after three sisters. In Surrey the sparkling comes from a vineyard ten miles up the road.
A vineyard ties up land, costs money for years, and the first good bottle is a decade away. Families plant anyway. They are thinking about the generation after them, not the quarter after this one.
Here is what they are pouring.
São Lourenço do Barrocal
Alentejo
The Uva family has been at Barrocal for eight generations, more than two hundred years.
They lost it once. After the 1974 revolution the estate was taken over by the state. Part of it came back to the family in 1984, and it sat empty for years after that. José António Uva, the eighth generation, spent fourteen years bringing it back. It is still theirs, and still a working farm.
The wine was part of putting the land back to work. This year’s harvest was a record for the estate: 85,600kg of grapes, up from 53,100kg last year. A wet winter did it, which is rare in a region this warm and dry. Everything is picked by hand, and only from the estate’s own vines.
Two wines are out now, a sparkling rosé and the regional white 2023. Two or three more arrive by early 2027. They are not saying what yet, but sign us up to taste them.
Sublime Hotels
Comporta
Gonçalo Pessoa found Comporta in 2004 and bought the estate almost at once. He built a house on it first. The hotel followed in 2014, fourteen rooms to start.
The wine started as a partnership between a winemaker and a team of sommeliers. The aim was to show that Setúbal makes more than fortified wine, which is what the region is best known for.
The Reserva Particular range is a white, a red and a Moscatel Roxo. There is also a Blanc de Blancs from the Lisbon area.
Then there is the beer. In 2022 the bar team worked with Dois Corvos, a Lisbon craft brewery, on a rice beer. Comporta is rice country, fields in every direction. The ingredient chose itself.
Palazzo Avino
Ravello
Here the family is the label.
Mar-a-vi-glia is an Italian word for something wondrous and unexpected. It is also the initials of the three Avino sisters: Mariella, Attilia and MariaVittoria.
The grapes come from La Cascinetta, the Palazzo’s own vineyard in the heart of Ravello, between the garden and the sea.
Falanghina and Biancolella, both native to Campania. Straw yellow in the glass. Broom on the nose, then yellow peach and citrus. Fresh and balanced, with a long finish.
Beaverbrook
Surrey Hills
We covered the Beaverbrook list in June, when Head Sommelier Giovanni walked us through 444 bottles and 254 wines by the glass. This is the other half of that story: the family ten miles up the road who grow the estate’s own sparkling.
The Classic Cuvée is made for Beaverbrook by Albury Organic Vineyard. Nick Wenman planted it in 2009, after thirty years in IT and forty years of wanting a vineyard. His daughter Lucy runs it with him.
Albury is organic and biodynamic, one of only a handful in the country certified for both. That means cow horns packed with manure, buried over winter and dug up in spring.
The 2019 is Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier, all of it from the North Downs, made by the Great British Classic Method. The same method as Champagne.
Pale golden straw. Strawberry and citrus on the nose. Creamy on the palate with a little spice, and a mousse that holds. Good before dinner, and sturdy enough to stay on the table.