
"You really need to be gifted with great stubbornness not to let this traditional, scarce, but wonderful way of producing wine fall.""
"You really need to be gifted with great stubbornness not to let this traditional, scarce, but wonderful way of producing wine fall.""
The Czar has won several awards
and medals, including a gold medal at the Moscow International Fair in 2011, out of 5,000 submitted to the competition.
When Fortunato Garcia talks about his wine, Czar, he keeps coming back to one word: madness. Nothing about his project—which his father began on the island of Pico in Portugal’s Azores archipelago in the 1960s—makes much sense. The grapes are grown on a tiny volcanic island with a violent climate in the middle of the Atlantic. The wind and the salt don’t let up. The vines are old, and their yields are tiny.