A day at Van Zeller’s Winemaking in Vila nova de Gaia
It’s May, it’s raining, it’s gray, but it’s also the first day I’ve been invited by Alvaro & Francisco Van Zeller, to visit their new facility in the south-east part of Vila Nova de Gaia, next to the Douro river, at a industrial compound, where they have their logistic operation, winemaking and blending laboratory and store some of their precious port wines, dating back to even 1934.
Welcome to the lab.
A goldmine for winelover - where the port wine is blended
Entering the reasonable big warehouse that closed down already as it was 17:00, I went with Alvaro and his colleague upstairs to the winemaking laboratory. His colleague, the export manager Frederico, whom father is a well known photographer, living on the Azores islands, doing landschape photography (another big passion of mine) showed me around the building and we then started a tour about the wines they are blending.
Blending master
Entering the domain of the winemaker, the first thing you will notice is the big spittoon that sits in the middle of the room as an altar. No winemaker can swallow all the wines they are tasting to understand the blends they need to produce in order to obtain the right balance, especially when aged tawnies have the same properties every year, so it’s vital for their tongue, tasting buds and don’t forget their alcohol percentage, to keep sober at all times in order to do their job right and drive home safely.
With a constant smile on his face, tasting and drinking port wines, he must have one of the best jobs in the world..
Meet Alvaro Van Zeller, the Winemaker
As a co-founder of Vanzeller.com and the Wine Collection Van Zeller, Alvaro van Zeller is also the winemaker. He has been training his senses for decades and can easily blend flavors with his eyes closed. The lineup of small plastic bottles, all labeled with samples from different quinta’s, different years, and even different brands, he get’s to work by pouring content into wine glasses, smelling, tasting and spitting out the wines to get the right mixture and blend for botteling.
Winemaking at it’s best
A little behind the scenes of Van Zellers Vintage line-up.
As you can see here, 2020 is a sublime vintage, according to the winemaker. The bottles have been labelled with different characteristics so it’s easy to follow their progress over time. A bottle of a sublime vintage will very probably be costing more than a bottle of an average vintage. We believe this bottle is going to be part of Barão de Vilar Vintage 2020.
For blending and preparing, even colheita's from a great year such as 1985 are being tested.
The Warehouse
After having tasted and understood how their wineblending proces works, we went down into the big warehouse. Just recently opened, more south from the old wine cellars of Vila Nova de Gaia, you can find this new logistic and operation centre, including a bottling line, warehouse storage, winebarrels, both wooden and stainless steel.
You can see that the have invested heavily in the machinery, the storage and also in the barrels, as they are brand new and top of the line.
Enjoy a good glass of port wine, from 1 of their brands:
