The Circle of Life
By Joana van Zeller
30 November, 2024
I was born in a family where wine, for good and bad reasons, was always the motto behind every decision. And very early in life I felt that this unspoken motto was soon to become my own.
It is also funny, but I can establish a circle of life when making a correspondence between the different type of Ports and my own life.
Clearly my childhood and my early teens where my Tawny Years. Around the table in my family house in the Douro the only Ports that whirled around were Tawny Ports with almost illegible labels produced in the property or offered by some friends or relatives.
Back then life went around the calendar of the vineyards. September for the harvest and Easter holidays to check upon the « novidade » better said the forecast of what the production was going to be that year … and these periods in the Douro where the highlights of my childhood. My father was an only child, no cousins but a lot of distant relatives that also spent their holidays in the Douro that would come round to play. But in my every day life I would go with my grandfather everywhere he would go – the vineyards, the winery, or to Régua to buy some ice cream after he had dealt with all the bureaucracy in Casa do Douro.
In those days, grapes were sold to Graham’s Port and, every harvest , the Graham’s would come for lunch and to check upon the wine. My grandmother, although born in Portugal was 100 % culturally foreign. Half French, half Russian and therefore the whole ambiance was cosmopolitan and sophisticated. Something rare in the Douro Valley back in those days in a family of Portuguese winegrowers.
When I married Cristiano in the mid-80s at Quinta do Noval the talk and the trend was only about Vintage Ports. Something absolutely new for me, that at start I could not understand or enjoy. Too red to be a Port, too sweet for a red wine… a total nonsense that soon became an acquired taste. This was my Vintage Port phase.
Moving on the circle of life I was back to Quinta Vale D Maria in 2006 (one of my family’s properties) that had been rented out to Graham’s Port since 1973. The main goal was the production of world class Douro DOC reds and top-quality Ports.
We were part of a silent revolution and a come back to the roots – in fact the Douro wine production was for centuries centred in the production of reds – Port was an accident of Nature and one of the first marketing products in the wine world. The market was asking for this naturally sweet wine…
And now I´m are back to my beginning after selling Quinta Vale D. Maria in 2017 – Van Zellers & Co is mainly a Port wine company focused in the production of high quality Ports. We also have high quality Douro Doc reds and whites, Cv-Curriculum Vitae and VZ-Van Zellers & Co, but my main passion are the Tawnies or as we now call them the Crafted by Time Ports.
And it really is about time, something scarce that seems immense when one starts roaming the circle of life.
