Ó GENTE DA MINHA TERRA
(Amália Rodrigues/Tiago Machado)
Mariza at The Late Show with David Letterman
CBS Television, U.S.A. - October 11th, 2007
Last Thursday night, the David Letterman show featured a performance by the Portuguese Fado singer Mariza. Born in Mozambique to an African mother and Portuguese father, Mariza learned how to sing the Fado in Lisbon's Fado Houses during her childhood.
I often saw Fado being performed on TV while growing up in Portugal, but I confess that I don't listen to Fado regularly. I do own a few CDs that I purchased in Portugal while on vacation there, but I listen to them no more than once in a long time. A recent performance of Mariza at the Boston Berklee Performance Center confirmed what I already knew... that Fado is indeed something quite unique. Then Fado is elevated to an amazing listening experience when delivered in a live setting by a true Diva like Mariza. Her presence on stage is captivating and "demands" attention as typically expected at a Fado concert.
Then she brought up wine explaining how she keeps a bottle of "Tinto" backstage. It was an introduction to the next song "Oiça lá o Senhor Vinho" (Listen Here Mr.Wine) a song about <<what wine will do to you if you drink to much of it>>. All delivered in a very entertaining form.
Two things that I believe the rest of the world is starting to learn more of - Fado and Portuguese Table wine. (Table meaning non-sweet wine, we all know that Port is well known all over the world already).
Last week, Wine Blogging Wednesday featured reviews of wines from Portugal, hosted by Catavino. 34 bloggers participated, tasting and reviewing 62 different wines from 10 different Portuguese DOCs. Here is a quote from Catavino summarizing the results of this tasting of Portuguese Table Wines:
<<Overall, it appears as if Portugal was a huge hit as a quality wine region, influencing many of you to conduct further research into specific regions, grapes and wineries. However, the majority also found our WBW theme quite challenging, not only because Portuguese wine outside of the Douro or Vinho Verde are hard to come by (hence, why we included the PDF), but also because Portuguese wine in general has had little coverage outside of...well...Portugal. Consequently, I can only hope that Importers are listening, because as proven by this months theme, there is an untapped market just waiting to be discovered!>
Those of us who live in the New Bedford area, arguably little Portugal in America, are not familiar with the challenging aspect addressed in the Catavino summary. We have plenty of Portuguese Table wines to choose from at our local liqueur stores, with prices ranging from $3.99 to $49.99 and spanning across every single region of Portugal. But we are the lucky ones. The rest of the country is not as fortunate as we are... at least not yet.
Recommended Wine & Music pairing: Mariza's "Concerto em Lisboa" with a red Esporão Reserva 2003 Alentejo D.O.C.
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