Good Value Guru in Portugal, Episode I

The story so far. The Good Value Guru has been invited to Portugal to collaborate on the annual wine guide written by Portuguese pundit An¨ªbal Coutinho. It¡¯s a reciprocation scenario really as An¨ªbal collaborated on our People¡¯s Guide last year ¨C that brave blind tasted guide attempting to reclaim the SA tasting scene from sighted specialists and those that demand appearance fees ¨C a virulent swine ¡®flu that has now spread to wine tourism guides. Our two week visit is bookended by dinners hosted by Vini Portugal, the Portuguese next level WOSA (Wines of SA, the exporters¡¯ mouthpiece), while our daily tastings will be arranged by the local Wine Routes.

Sonia and Anibal

Vini Portugal is on a well-funded roll, having been vouchsafed €75 million over five years to raise global awareness of Portuguese potations. Given the quality of the stuff tasted so far, that won¡¯t be a labour of Hercules. The Alentejo red served on the TAP flight knocked the Air France Vin de Pays out of Johannesburg into an ugly pocket of clear air turbulence. Seated in row 80 in poverty class on one of Air France¡¯s two bulbous Airbus A380s, the GVG claimed the French soccer team was in Business, given the flood of Air France trolley dollies posing in the aisles while their colleagues immortalized the flight on their cell phone cameras. In fact Business disembarkation for economy was delayed while the same ritual was reprised by the ground staff at Charles de Gaulle.

VP area manager (Angola, UK and Brazil) glamourous S¨®nia Fernandes, is recently returned from Luanda where she was given a traditional African welcome ¨C mugged at gun point and passport liberated. So punters planning to fly south for the FIFA soccer World Cup in June should realize crime is far from a national sport in SA; indeed it has become a continental craze. L¡¯affair ET is playing all over European TVs, so those B&B owners hoping for a late supporter surge should perhaps start discounting those empty rooms now.

Sonia´s Turbot (before)

A sociologist (University of Toronto) by training with a career to date working for a Canadian politician, S¨®nia is well qualified to promote Portuguese liquid assets. And she¡¯s also a dab hand at matching the stuff (Quinta de Regueiro Alvarino 2009) to the 3Kg Turbot she ordered for main course at the Solar dos Presuntos restaurant in Lisbon on Friday night.

Sonia´s Turbot (after)

Grown on quartzites in the Vinho Verde region in the north, you don¡¯t need to imagine the minerals and pears on the Regueiro palate. No wonder winemakers on the Partyberg requested the GVG smuggle Alvarino vine cuttings in his capacious underpants. Although for that plan to work, the GVG will have to go garshly on the pickled octopus, spicy sausage and presunto, or his nether region capacity will be constricted. About as likely as Bafana Bafana winning the World Cup and S¨®nia retrieving her passport, I¡¯d have thought.