We are Goliardos
We like wine, poetry and virtue.
Born in the middle ages and raised in some of Europe’s most renowned universities, we spent more time hopping from one tavern to the other than attending classes.
Living off the alms collected from the higher classes and inspired by the pleasures of wine, we wrote poetry that some called erudite (while others described it merely as obnoxious), in which we would cheer for free loving and debauchery and complain about the current social order.
We don’t even remember the reason we call ourselves Goliards… either because we related to Goliath (that villain in the Bible) or perhaps because we consider ourselves to be quite gulosus (Latin for gluttonous). Or maybe even because we like to spend our lives sipping, which in Portuguese we call “dar goles” and it’s close enough to scoring goals within the good life?
The main thing is that times do change, but our desires won’t. Currently, we travel from winery to winery by car rather than donkey riding as we did in old times, getting to know vineyards and wines from different slopes, in order to discover soulful producers who orchestrate aromas and flavors like true maestros of the land.
Around a table, while swirling a glass of wine, we give time to time, enabling the wine to reveal itself. When celebrating our acquaintance with a new wine that is finally able to come out of the bottle for its grand and unique performance, we tell drunken stories and dream of a warm-hearted world in which Humankind enjoys life freely, where people wake up in the morning with a smile and laugh as much and as loud as they like, revealing a sensitive intelligence.
In this goliardic party, where the door is open to all open-minded people, we discover the new and the different, without prejudice. We exchange wines with virtue – old, new, traditional, irreverent, pure, from the North or the South, within or without fashion, from here and there – nothing matters except, virtue.
Slightly woozy (or just a bit tipsy), we raise our glasses with different wines, different friends, old and new.
We like wine, poetry and virtue.
We are Goliards.