﻿Coming up, the Bird family goes on a treasure hunt—for wine aged underwater! Welcome
to Jonathan Bird’s Blue World!
Winemaking is an age-old tradition dating back thousands of years. It’s
well-known that wine improves with age due to complex chemistry. Historically,
wine is aged in barrels for at least a few months, and then in bottles for a while longer.
The aging process usually takes place in a cool wine cellar, where the temperatures and humidity
are consistent. But in Portugal, one daring wine aficionado is experimenting with a completely new
way of aging wine. Joaquim Parrinha runs Ecoalga dive shop in Porto Covo, Portugal. He says that
the cool but not cold seawater in this part of the world is perfect for aging wine…underwater!
Porto Covo is a coastal region south of Lisbon on the Atlantic Ocean. It
is known for a beautiful combination of secluded sandy coves and rocky shores,
making it a favorite vacation destination.
Christine, Elise, Liam and I meet up with Joaquim at his dive shop to visit one of his favorite
local dives, and retrieve some underwater wine to try. We start prepping our gear. Then we hit the
marina to load the boat.
We head out of a picture perfect rocky cove
on a short ride to the dive site. Just offshore: Ilha do Pessegueiro,
whose name comes from Latin meaning “Fish Island.” During Roman times, locally-caught fish were dried
and salted on this island. A Fort, built in the 1600s, protected this valuable resource.
Just off the island is a great dive site!
Underwater, we find a garden of different species
of algae providing habitat for a wide diversity of marine life.
There are lots of fish. A wrasse knows where to look just under
the edge of the algae for shrimp and other small invertebrates.
A
sea cucumber eats sand in order to digest the thin layer of algae that
grows on it. Then it leaves behind a trail of nice clean compacted sand. Sand poop.
An octopus watches me but refuses to come out and play. Goatfish forage
for food in a unique manner. They have
chemo-sensitive whiskers known as barbels. Like a metal detector,
the fish uses them to search for food just under the surface of the sand.
High above, a school of sardines feeds on plankton in the water. Soon, Joaquim
points the way to his secret stash.
On the sea floor, a locked container with wine inside. I have to admit, I was expecting it to
be larger. But as it turns out, this is just his wine fridge, not the whole cellar.
We select a few bottles to sample.
We
raided Davy Jones’ locker, and we found some wine. Time for lunch! Ha ha! After the dive,
we head on over to A-Mar, the fanciest restaurant in Porto Covo, located right on the beach.
Inside, Chef Aureo Júnior opens our wine, while under the direction of restaurant owner Ivone
Machado. We have a red, a white and a rosé to try. It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it.
We enjoy a lovely lunch with some delicious wines. And
I have some detailed tasting notes: That’s good! After some persistence,
Joaquim agreed to show us the secret location of his massive underwater wine cellar.
Todd and I return to Portugal, but we had to agree to keep the location a secret.
We meet Joaquim at his seaside store Mercado do Mar back in Porto Covo. Hey hey good morning!
Good to see you again. This is Todd. We’re really excited to see the secret location of
your underwater wine cellar. Let’s go! Joaquim shows us a crate of wine that he recently removed
from the ocean for a client. You can tell from the algae that it was underwater quite a while.
The marine growth on the bottles is the hallmark of this special wine.
Well I guess we’re ready so… OK, get in the car, let’s go. We get in the car for
the long ride to the secret location. But they have to take precautions.
You ready? Yeah this is going to be great. Uh oh. I guess it is secret.
After a brutal commute, we have made it. We are here! Ah!
We’re here! We made it! Awesome! We waste no time in setting up. There was no room in
the car for our dive gear, so Joaquim arranged to have some loaner equipment
for us. But I think my wetsuit is a little small. Todd, help!! RRRRR!!!
We hoof it down the dock to the dive site. It’s a long walk.
We’re going to walk on this dock all the way to Spain!
Underwater, we follow Joaquim down to the wine cellar.
Scattered over the rocks of the breakwater are hundreds of crates, containing over
8,000 bottles of wine. It might look chaotic, but the crates are tagged and
organized by wine type and vintage. Joaquim can find any wine he needs very quickly.
Most of the wines will age down here for 1-4 years.
The wine cellar even provides habitat for marine life, like an artificial reef.
Fish hang around the crates.
The ropes provide a footing for tunicates. These filter feeders each have two siphons.
Water goes in one, where it is filtered for plankton. Then the water comes out the other.
The crates grow algae like a vertical garden, which attracts hungry sea cucumbers.
Joaquim believes that the wine forms a beneficial relationship with the ocean through the bottle.
Salt water never gets into the bottle through the glass. Yet many people can taste the difference
between examples of the same wine aged underwater versus in the traditional way. What exactly is
happening to the wine here on the sea floor is a mystery. Joaquim thinks that the glass itself
allows a tiny bit of interaction with the sea, and he attributes that to the glass being an amorphous
solid. After getting a good look around, Joaquim directs us towards the bottles he needs today.
Sneaking a bottle out is not as easy as
you think. Removing the bottles from the crates requires the correct tool.
First we collect a couple bottles of white wine.
Then it’s time for rosé.
And finally we ascend with our treasure. Woo!
Now that was a good dive! Yeah, I got rosé! I got some white! Yeah!
Joaquim picked a red to go with our white and Rosé so now we have a complete tasting.
A toast. A toast to a beautiful partnership between Portugal, Azores, Madeira and Jonathan
Bird’s Blue World TV. Yeah! Cheers! Salud! ching ching! Very very good.
So in a really new wine, a red wine, it’ll be bright red. But then as it ages,
it gets a little browner, it gets a little darker. And the flavors get more complex and concentrated.
And you can often tell roughly how old a red wine is by its appearance—just by how quickly
it changes from like a bright red to more of a burgundy red. And this wine to me looks
like it’s about ten years old based on its color and also on its taste. But it’s not that old!
Aging wine underwater is a new and experimental technique. Not only does
it make for some interesting wines, but the whole process creates beneficial artificial
reefs. So as far as I can tell, this seems like a great new phenomenon in the Blue World.
Hey Guys! If you want to learn more about diving in Portugal,
check out portugaldive.com. They’re the Portugal diving experts!