The wines have been submerged in the waters of the Alentejo coast for over a decade and will be “fished”, opened and served on board a boat on the 20th and 21st of June. This is the plan for the first edition of Subaquatic Wine Tourism, an event entirely dedicated to underwater wine tourism that will take over the sea in Sines and Porto Covo to explain what really happens when a bottle of wine is placed at the bottom of the sea, a river, a dam or a cave.
“We are finally going to reveal what this underwater wine thing is. It is something unprecedented. For the first time in the history of underwater Portuguese wine, we are talking about something that no one has ever explained before”, says Maria João de Almeida, president of the Portuguese Wine Tourism Association, adding that “there are many theories here, which can be addressed and discussed, and which will be discussed for the first time at this event”.
Thus, with the help of Adega do Mar — an underwater wine aging project founded by agronomist and diver Joaquim Parrilha —, on the morning of June 20th, a diving session will take place to recover the bottles of wine that have been aging on the coast of Sines and Porto Covo. This will be followed by comparative tastings between the wines that were submerged and those aged on land, with sommeliers and researchers who will evaluate the organoleptic and chemical differences.
On June 21st, there will also be a talk entitled “Submerged Wine: Scientific Evidence or Curiosity?”, which will answer the initial questions: “What happens chemically? Why does it become softer? Is it the pressure? Is it the light? Is it the lack of oxygen?”, he explains. To this end, there will be a panel of speakers, from producers to university professors who will share their knowledge in the area. They are Joaquim Parrinha (from Adega do Mar), Jacinta Sobral (Quinta da Serenada / Association of Producers of the Alentejo Coast), Pedro Martínez (Bodega Verónica, Spain), Maria João Cabrita (PhD Professor – Agricultural Sciences at the University of Évora) and Cristina Barrocas Dias (PhD Professor – Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Évora). Registrations must be made at the Portuguese Wine Tourism Association.
“There is a logic here in which the sea is the common denominator of everything. And we present this product, underwater wine tourism, as a way of also respecting the territory, after all, and bringing together some ingredients that are very important to us: science, the sea, wine, tourism, in a way that we think is very interesting and very different”, explains José Santos, president of the Regional Tourism Entity and the Regional Agency for the Promotion of Tourism of Alentejo, adding that the objective here “is, obviously, to create more content linked to wine tourism”. “We already have the designer wine cellars, the underground wine cellars, the museum wine cellars. We have the wines under the Alqueva, now we have wine on the Alentejo coast”, he adds.
As for the bottles that will be fished out, these cannot yet be revealed, but they are “from several batches”, she reveals. “But we will not only receive wine that was sunk at sea, we will also have sunken ginga and rum”, adds Maria João de Almeida. “Joaquim has some wines that have only been there for months and others that have been there for years. And there are others that will stay for years. Because there is, for example, Francisca Van Zeller’s Port wine there, which she cannot remove”, she exemplifies.
“We are also very interested in exploring this dimension of literacy and knowledge around the topic. In other words, there is the more experiential component, there is the tourist component, which is interesting. But there is a dimension of literacy and knowledge here that we would also like to see worked on”, adds the president of the Regional Tourism Authority and the Regional Agency for the Promotion of Tourism in Alentejo.
Subaquatic Wine Tourism is organized by the Regional Tourism Authority of Alentejo and Ribatejo and the Municipality of Sines, with design and production by APENO (Portuguese Wine Tourism Association), and with the support of the Regional Tourism Promotion Agency of Alentejo.