Portuguese wines more than just a trend

Portuguese wines are fast becoming trendy and even overtaking French wines for a few top awards, and Macau is reportedly one of the best places to find them.
Just last year, six Portuguese wines and ports were included in Wine Spectator’s top 100 list. The world’s most powerful wine magazine awarded Portuguese wines three of the four ‘most popular’ awards.
David Higgins is the owner of MacauSoul, a cozy wine bar near the Ruins of St Paul’s. He opened the bar in 2008 with his wife with the aim of providing to customers a sense of “being in a Portuguese place” by focusing on an exclusively Portuguese wine list.
“Sadly, Portuguese wines around the world are not fully appreciated for their complexity, their diversity and their tremendous value,” Higgins told the South China Morning Post.
With MacauSoul offering more than 600 different labels, Higgins stated that its importers have sprung up over the past few years. “When we first opened, there must have been five wine importers in town. Now there must be 90,” Higgins said. “There are far too many not-very-good wines on the market here. I have to work pretty hard to weed out the bad ones.”
Meanwhile Just Wong, wine sommelier at The Ritz-Carlton Macau, has claimed it is not just a trend to drink Portuguese wine in the city, but rather a culture.
“We have a portion of people living here who are Portuguese, and drinking wine is a daily habit for most Portuguese people. So, it’s not just a trend, but also a local culture,” Wong told the SCMP.