A Wine-Fuelled Life Pivot

Alastair and Ana Leithead have spent the last two decades roaming the world, living in numerous countries on four different continents.

A life in constant motion has great allure, with adventure constantly around the corner, but we've found a recent yearning to put down roots.  We are amid, what you folk here at the GSB, call a pivot – our life pivot. And just one lesson in we are sure this course will help guide us towards our intended change of focus.

Ana is a Swedish diplomat and Alastair is a foreign correspondent for the BBC, and we met more than a decade ago through clowns and fire amid violent protests on the streets of Bangkok. We have moved many times since, and having just completed our latest posting in Nairobi, Kenya, we are part of the John S. Knight (JSK) Journalism Fellowship here at Stanford.

In June, after a precious year of reading and researching, learning and thinking, we’ll be moving to our farm that’s properly off the grid in rural Portugal….and hope wine will play an even more integral part of our lives. We want to make it, to grow it, to taste it, to help other people taste it, and to make our mark on a firmly old world wine country with a still maturing industry, ripe with opportunity.

Thailand is not the best place to drink wine, as many foreign imports carry a 400% tax and a risk the goods have spoilt en route. When we moved to Los Angeles, we joined wine clubs in the Central Coast (perhaps attracted by the Scandinavian familiarity of Solvang), as we plunged into the Pinot Noirs and the sampled the Sauvignon Blancs. 

And most recently living in Nairobi, we tried Kenya’s own Leleshwa Merlot-Shiraz semi-sweet only once – for good reason – and again battled against cruel import taxes. Ethiopia’s Rift Valley wines weren’t too bad, but living in Kenya put us that bit closer to South Africa where Al lived and worked for many years. Cape Town was also his bolt hole while reporting war in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Cape is where his love of wine (and Chenin Blanc) first began, when new world wines were still the overbearing and aggressive new kids on the block.

We have winemaker friends in the Western Cape – one with his own vineyard in beautiful Stellenbosch, others source their grapes and work with a winemaker to blend up some top-scoring wines. One scoured the whole region for four Portuguese varietals to blend into a 4.5/5 wine and is branching out into the newly-planted Swartland.

The tasting rooms of Stellenbosch and Franschhoek are welcoming and affordable, the wines are bold and quaffable…and we think Portugal (and indeed the US) has a lot to learn from the way they present themselves.

Most have heard of Port or Vinho Verde, some have heard of Dão and Douro, but by volume it’s rural Alentejo that produces the most of Portugal’s table wines. They’re cheap, but they’re good…and that’s where the opportunity lies.

A French friend of ours is a serious international wine merchant, with a 400 year old family vineyard in Languedoc. He believes the problem with selling Portuguese wine on the international market is the 250 native varietals with long and unpronounceable Portuguese names – nobody knows what to ask for in the modern, simplified world of “Cab Sav”, “Pinot” and “Chard” (cougar juice).”

We think there’s scope to attract international markets, perhaps younger generations, with the novelty of unknown grapes. If you like Cab Sav you should try Touriga Nacional, or sample Baga if Pinot Noir is your thing. Touriga Franca steps in for Malbec, and Alvarinho is where you’d turn for a dry Reisling.

We’ll need to do some more translating to help put Portugal back on the international wine map…for more than just making port and growing corks.

After many years bouncing around the world, moving country every few years, we’ve found a little piece of paradise we’ve called Vale das Estrelas, or Valley of the Stars, named after the Milky Way that sweeps above our farm when the lights are off. It all began with a ‘treasure hunt’ for an old ruin and some land in Alentejo province where Ana’s father’s family is from (she’s half Portuguese).

A map plotting vineyards and property for sale took us from Lisbon to the Spanish border where the bulk of the grapes are grown and some wines are still produced in the amphorae the Romans introduced to the Iberian peninsula. It ended in the south west with a couple of German-built houses and 18 acres of cork and olives.

We’re hoping to build a rural eco-tourism project to bring interesting folk from around the world to our doorstep…rather than us having to go to theirs.

Our guesthouses will have stunning views of the countryside, the Atlantic Ocean is just a short drive away, and our tasting room will introduce our guests to the wines of Alentejo. We will link up with the local winemakers, plant vines in our sandy/clay/loam and maybe even get into the export business.

Al will keep up his journalism (with a focus on new tech, VR/AR etc), Ana will run the business while Simon the dog and Vasco the Llama (get it?) keep an eye on our cork oaks, and scare the wild boars from our organic crops.

From daily Portuguese class (Al) to Sustainable Agriculture (Ana), we’re using some of our time here at Stanford to lay the foundations for a thriving business…and with the timely addition of GSBGEN-356 we want to turn our new project into our new life.

Join our adventure!

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