Andre Proulx
speaker
1,225 appearances
6 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard 11 Aug
Andre Proulx’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 6 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 3.
Appearances
You're listening to Two Guys Talking Wine with Michael Pincus and Andre Proulx. Michael. Hello, Andre.
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How are you? I'm fine, yourself? I'm doing very well. We've got a bit of a project in front of us today. I pulled up my socks and did some yeoman's work over the past week. As a yeoman does. And, you know, I got a chance to touch on one of my favorite regions, wine regions on the planet. I think it's certainly one of the regions that just might be one of the last great values in the wine world. Kind of unsung?
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I'd say unsung, but I think this is something where it's unsung because we have a monopoly that doesn't have an interest in developing it. I know we have some really great agents. He doesn't sponsor the podcast, but Bernard from Le Sommelier reps some really great producers from Portugal. And today we're talking about Vino Verde. Yeah, Vino Verde.
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I would agree with you. It is very much one of those unsung regions where most people think of it as a summertime region, if they think of it at all. Yeah. I think you've said everything that I could say about it. And it's fascinating because, I mean, these do work as summer wines. It's 34 degrees. We're sitting outside. We have in our glass the Aveleda Lutero, one of the...
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entry-level, call it entry-level, for lack of a better term. I think these wines are $10, if that. In and around there at the LCVO, and it's sort of what my introduction to Vino Verde was before having the opportunity in 2017 to go over there and be a judge at the Vino Verde competition, go back on vacation, and I've fallen deeply in love with a few producers there, but also with the region in general, and we're going to be talking about
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jump to think about, but the moment I see them, I'm like, oh, yeah, you know, with a slap on the forehead. Yeah, this was a really nice, like, revisit as well, and I'm really excited. We have five wines to taste through today, but I had a chance to sit down with the winemaker, the head winemaker. It's a fairly large winery, and the winemaker is Diogo Campilio, and I know you and I have given our initial thoughts about Vino Verde, but we're going to let him do most of the talking here, and
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You and I, we talked a bit about our own biases. I think that the difference is, you know, I was drawn to some producers that are on great wine lists. So Afro Shvino and Anselmo Mendes, which are two producers that I've mentioned on this podcast before. But I was always a bit surprised about how the locals look.
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whatever else they had in there. And half the time I was like, I don't even recognize this fish, but man, is it delicious. And the wine flowed, again, very white. Yeah. But moving on from the white wines, you know, I'm so glad I made that visit last fall or two falls ago in 2024. And you gave me my marching orders before I did this interview that you wanted me to ask about some of the outliers and, you know, the non-white situation of what's happening in Vino Verde.
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I don't know about you, when I went in 2017, it felt an awful lot like when I went to California on my first trip and these producers were just like, oh, it tastes like Pinot Noir, it tastes like Burgundy, and you end up with these syrupy red wines that taste more like Coca-Cola than Pinot. Well, in Vino Verde, I had the same experience where people were so proud of their red wines and they were acidic and tannic with no fruit.
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And I remember just being relatively early in my wine career at that point, being like, is there something I don't get here? But this last visit I took, which was only seven years later, the quality of the red wines has just exploded. These wines are...
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are delicious now they've got some balance they've got fruit they've harnessed in the tannins they're taking it easier on the extraction and i i had to ask diogo like like seven years isn't a lot of time when you're talking about the wine industry how did things change so quickly you touch the crucial points that is the the viticulture part
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You know, but it's wild because, and Michael, I hate that I'm doing this to you because first off, I didn't bring back any red Vino Verde with me. So that should tell you a lot about what I tasted and liked when I was in the region. I'm still more excited to taste the whites over the reds. I would say so am I. But the red wines I tasted weren't cooked. You know, like even though they are likely getting riper, it's just like, I think we may be getting to a position where
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Yes, I think that's an absolutely safe hypothesis. And who knows, maybe when we do a bit of a follow-up, we should see what red we can get our hands on to do a bit of a profile. But when we're talking about global trends, because we're talking about global trends with people preferring lighter red wines, people preferring wines with less oak content,
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One thing that Wienerwerd has in its, I think, advantage, because this is something we've talked about when we just tasted Armenian wine, and you and I were both super excited to do that, is wine regions that are working on rediscovering their heritage, working with indigenous grapes, rediscovering indigenous grapes, and to hear Diogo talk about an improvement in viticulture to see...
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the marriage of modern technology and modern viticultural practices being applied to indigenous grapes is something that I find very exciting because now you get to take, you know, what amounts to like when you drive through the countryside of Portugal, you see everyone with a pergola in their backyard covered with grapes and every Portuguese family that I've ever met in Canada is
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tell the story of aunt, uncle, grandma, grandpa, dad, making wine in their garage. Like winemaking is a part of their culture for the family thing, but to see progress being made to push the quality higher and having that applied to indigenous grapes is something where who knows what the next Chardonnay will be. Like maybe it will be Luero. I'd like to believe that, but Chardonnay will always be Chardonnay.
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I love how he ended that question, just talking about how he feels fortunate to be working with the indigenous varieties. But one thing that I really picked up on when he was talking is it sounds like Diogo feels fortunate to be working for a larger operation because you have the ability to
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literally have a research and development section and department of your winemaking to experiment with whatever it is, you know, your company feels might be of good potential. I guess as a winemaker and viticulturalist, you know, if you take a look at a soil sample, like you said, with the changing climate, if you want to plant Chardonnay in the granite soils of, you know, maybe that's something they would like to like to experiment with.
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I know you and I, and I stand by this. I still think Yellowtail makes terrible wine and should be ashamed of themselves. But just because you have a larger operation does not mean by default that the wines are going to be bad. And that large wineries, what you have is that potential to do that barrel selection and to really get the cream of the crop at the top. I would agree with you on Yellowtail to an extent.
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A monopoly that doesn't look further than entry-level. Because it's about making sales on volume, yeah. Yeah, you know, that's a complete fair point. So, I did this interview a little bit backwards, but I thought it was more important that we got a bit of a background...
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