http://www.bkwine.com/wine_tours/wine_tours.htm --- Interview (Part 2) with Luis Seabra responsible for the vineyards and the winemaking; the Niepoort winemaker. Were sitting at the brand new winery in the Tedo river valley, overlooking the terraced vineyards along the river and the Douro region impressively steep slopes. We are talking about the red wines and about the future of the Douro wines.

Niepoorts four main red wines are Vertente Tinto, Batuta, Redoma and Charme. They also make a new-old red wine called Robustus that is made in an old-fashioned style aged longer in wooden barrel.

Luis Seabra is clearly someone who likes to experiment with different wines, different grapes and different vineyards. There is plenty to material to choose from: there are 40,000 hectares of vineyards, 100 different grape varieties for the reds and 80 different grape varieties for the whites.

So, what will happen in the ten coming years? Luis thinks it is the great challenge of the Douro! For example improving the quality of the wines, but also in quantity, producing wines both of quality and in quantity; perhaps not always going the easy way. Louis speculates in the future strategy and emphasises that the key is to keep true to the origin of the vineyards, while at the same time avoiding doing too much work in the wine cellar: the wines must be allowed to express their origin, soil and grape material. We also draw some parallels with Priorat in Spain and learn some lessons from their mistakes.

And one should not forget the port wines in the Douro; Niepoort is above all a port wine company and without the port wines the Douro would not be the same.

Do not miss Part 1 of the interview where we talk about the white wines and about the style of winemaking at Niepoort.

More on Niepoort: http://www.niepoort-vinhos.com

This interview was made during a visit to the Douro Valley and the Douro Boys wineries in connection with the European Wine Bloggers Conference #EWBC 2009 in Lisbon.

Music: Mofessor, ScentoMeter, www.Podsafeaudio.com

By BKWine, http://www.bkwine.com

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