What wine critics think about Wines of Portugal?

Well I'm a huge fan of Portuguese wines and for me what's exciting about Portuguese wines is that they're so different. You know, you have this rich treasure trove of grape varieties and for me that means that Portugal's excitingly different. So that's what I, as someone who's interested in wine, that's what I really enjoy when I come to Portugal, tasting the different grape varieties and then the different expressions of the grape varieties in the different regions. I think Portugal has a lot to offer the wine world. Definitely it's important not to dumb down what you're doing, to express that difference, to show your personality and character and I think that has to be linked not just with the wines but with Portugal in general. So I think strong links to be made with tourism, with gastronomy and I think a lot to do really, a lot of work raising the profile of Portugal generally so that people can put the wines in context and understand that difference and the character of the wines. For me the most exciting thing about wine is to keep along your adventure with wine, to keep journeying with wine and always to be tasting new things and I think Portugal has a lot to offer the wine world. Wines of Portugal, I mean I think it's always difficult to have a generic brand because there are so many different wines, so many different regions but I think as I said before it's important that everybody pulls together and collaborates to project a strong image of Portugal and that Portugal makes table wines. People know about Port but they don't associate Portugal as a country with table wines. There's a lot of excitement in Portugal, there's a lot to discover so I would encourage consumers to taste Portuguese wines. It's very exciting and I think the quality of Portuguese wine is higher than it's ever been and there is a lovely range of very distinctive flavours and styles. I think wine is increasingly exciting and I think Portuguese wine is at a very interesting stage in its evolution and any wine lover who's got anything like an open mind deserves to try Portuguese wine. But I would say that Portuguese wine producers ought to be very open, ought to be very well informed about the sort of wines that are being produced everywhere else in the world that they're competing against and ought to try and travel as much as possible to their markets. To be honest I don't think that history is a particularly important part of the mix. I know Portugal itself has a very noble history but I think what's important to modern wine lovers I'm afraid is what the wine today tastes like and I honestly don't think that they're very interested in what was happening in Portugal hundreds of years ago. They're losing out on a wide range of distinct flavours and styles that only come from Portugal. As you probably realise I'm a big fan of Portuguese wines. I think they're interesting, they're diverse, there's lots of different flavours. I think Portugal's got an amazing, for a small country, it's got an amazing variety of regions with distinct regional styles and in wine that's a good thing. I think diversity is a good thing in wine. I think it's a challenge because it's diverse, you know, it's not a single simple story to tell about Portuguese wines. Yeah, Vinnie Portugal is a very strong brand I think. Well certainly it's not necessarily a strong brand for the consumer but it's very strong to the journalists and the trade and the retailers in the UK. I think Vinnie Portugal and certainly the UK has done a fantastic job of promoting Portuguese wines through some really innovative and very modern initiatives, you know, and the way they've embraced modern communication methods. I can think of very few other national generic promoting bodies who've been so good at engaging journalists, getting journalists over to Portugal. You know, whenever I've wanted to come to Portugal, Vinnie Portugal have made that possible just like that without any trouble at all. So that's been really good. I like Portuguese wines very much for a number of reasons. I like the fact that there are so many different grape varieties and different styles which means that you never get bored of Portuguese wines. I like the fact that they have a regional accent, that they're regionally distinctive and I like the fact they go with food. So most of all I just like the fact that they're Portuguese. I mean I like the idea of Portugal, I like the idea of Portuguese wines. I wish more people knew about the wines. I think that they're missing out on one of the the most unique collections of grape varieties in the world. Portugal has as many grape varieties as France, it has more grape varieties than Spain, it doesn't have quite as many as Italy, but I think it has an enormous fund of original, interesting and really food-friendly grape varieties that people would love to taste. They're modern, they're fun, they've got in most cases good acidity and they're European.