 |
| Bum Wines But No Muscatel |
I have mentioned before how my Uncle Cotton was a wine connoisseur (click here.) Cotton’s preferred wine brand was Muscatel. I never knew much about Muscatel other than I figured it was just some brand of cheap wine that came and went as you don’t see it listed much anymore on the “Bum Wine” lists.
However, on this trip to Portugal I thought about Uncle Cotton and Muscatel quite a bit. Touring the Douro Valley, I learned that Muscatel is really quite the thing with a very storied history behind it (click here and note in the history of the grape’s evolution, that because our American variety was immune to some insect that plagued Europe, it was then used to make their strain stronger and hence more resistant to the plague.) Bottom line then, contrary to its rep (click here), Muscatel is by no means a bum wine.
We visited the town of Favaios where most of the muscatel is produced. (You know you are entering a serious wine town when a giant cask sits at the roundabout leading into it.) Favaios is a little town of 1500 people who produce over 30 million bottles of Muscatel every year. They are not part of the Porto group of 18 wineries that make port wine because some law was passed years ago saying that no grapes grown above 500 meters could be used in the making of port. Since Favaios sits 600 meters above sea level, they were in effect barred from the group because the Porto boys felt that grapes grown above 500 feet were somehow inferior. (While that was the “official” explanation to the Favaios folks, it sounded to me like somebody done somebody wrong and this was a payback, screw you kind of thing. Just sayin’.)
But the folks of Favaios were a resilient group in that they banded together, formed their own co-op and invented a new wine of their own – Muscatel. Produced much the same as is Port Wine, Muscatel comes from one particular type of grape and so it is unique. Muscatel made in Favaios is similar to how “champagne” labelled as such can only come from one region of France.
Therefore, in honor of Uncle Cotton I purchased a couple bottles of Muscatel while in Favaios and sometime in the future plan to have toast to him and the folks of Favaios at Buzzy’s Country Store.