Portugal is not just about sweet and fizzy Rose any more…..

Anyone out there willing to admit that they once let candles drip down a Mateus, or Lancers bottle and kept it as a sign of their worldliness and sophistication? The branded sweet Rose wines of Portugal are still around but no longer hold the cache that they once did for Americans. White Zinfandel has dealt the Portuguese Rose category a serious body-blow in the US. Portuguese table wines are not faring much better here and continue to be a mystery to those living outside of Portugal’s borders. The great shame is that Portugal has many unique characters as a wine producing nation. There is a fantastic range of indigenous grape varieties such as Touriga Nacional, Touriga Franca, Tinta Cao, Tinta Roriz, Trincadeira and Castelão among many reds and Louriero, Arinto, Bical and Fernão Pires among whites, with their own unique and attractive identities. Contrast this to neighboring Spain which has almost five times as much vineyard land as Portugal and yet continues to work on perfecting a much narrower range of vine varieties.

Spanish wine exports are booming internationally and as you can see is extremely well represented in our shops. Spain displays a combination of predominantly Mediterranean climate with an almost California-like sensibility and is the kid who can do no wrong. Portugal on the other hand has been struggling to make its presence felt on wine lists and shelves outside Portugal and its original colonies.

Fortunately for Portugal the past 10 years have brought about enormous positive changes in the quality and character of their wines. Portugal has long had the grape varieties, the huge variety in grape-growing environments and the refreshing acidity that its Atlantic coastline confers on the wines. What it has lacked until recently is vine-growing and wine-making sophistication. Most white wines were either too thin or not sufficiently refreshing. Dão was hopelessly fruitless with high acidity and mouth drying tannins. Many other regions had hard and rustic characteristics. The first phase of expansion of Douro table wines displayed interesting but unpolished characters. In the last few years there has been an extraordinary change as Douro wine producers realize that they can no longer treat the table wines as Port and are using gentler methods of extraction.

Recently, quality-conscious winemakers were allowed to get their hands on de-stalking equipment which helps to minimize the tannins from the stalks. Ever chew on a grape stalk? An increasing number of vineyards were planted with a single grape variety thought most suitable for its particular conditions, as opposed to the traditional Portuguese habit of planting a mix of different varieties in the same field.

Dão

Dao is a region in North Central Portugal with the reputation of producing some of the country’s finest red wines. There is no doubt that this region has great potential. Locked in on three sides by high, granite mountains and sheltered from the Atlantic, Dão benefits from long, warm summers and abundant winter rainfall. The sandy soils are well drained and the vineyards are stocked with a wealth of indigenous grape varieties. Over much of the last 50 years, however, the wines have rarely lived up to expectations. By the end of the 20th century certain leading properties had emerged such as Alvaro Castro's properties Quinta da Pellada and Quinta de Saes at Pinhanços, all of them less than 20km from each other in the eastern, even drier part of the region.

Quinta da Pellada in Pinhanços:

Alvaro Castros' principal property is halfway between Quinta dos Roques and Quinta das Maias and is run by this ex-civil engineer and his daughter Maria. Here vineyards have been specifically planted to unique local grape varieties they fell are best adapted to the site.

Alvaro Castro’s Dao struck me rather funny when I first opened it. Dao to me had always been a lip-smacker of a wine with its acidity and tannic disposition. The 2006 Dao from Alvaro de Castro is anything but tannic. The wine shows round and voluptuous characters on the front palate leading to deep berry and black fruit characters on the back palate. This is sure to be a real crowd pleaser.


Alvaro de Castro Dao 2006, Retail $17.99 Warehouse $14.99

Produced from the brawny Touriga Nacional and Tinta Roriz grape varieties, it still retains an elegant underlying character with deep-dark berries and black cherries on the nose and palate. This wine has a beautiful structure that will certainly handle ageing for those with a cellar.

Alvaro de Castro Quinta da Pellada 2005, Retail $49.99 Warehouse $39.99


Quinta do Ameal is technically a Vinho Verde:

The Quinta do Ameal estate dates from the 1850s, but the Araujo family has owned it for just 15 years. This old estate is owned today by one of Vinho Verde’s most ambitious proponents, Pedro Araujo. When taking over the estate, one of his first projects was to turn the entire property over to organic viticulture, one of the few to practice this in the zone. I met Pedro Araujo last June in Oporto at the wine show and revisited his wines. I owe a deep amount of gratitude to Pedro as he gave me the name of a fabulous seafood restaurant where I had a late lunch after the show. Pedro is a serious winemaker, determined to show that the undervalued terroir and grapes of Vinho Verde can be harnessed to make great wines. He is particularly devoted to the Loureiro variety, which he has planted in favor of other indigenous varieties. He ferments and ages Loureiro in new French oak barrels for six months, and feels that the floral character of the Loureiro blends perfectly with the oak aromas which add to the overall complexity of his wine. For grape quality, Pedro has cut yields from 17 tons per acre to just five tons per acre, mostly through green harvesting. He farms organically, with cover crops - legumes, grasses and clover - grown between rows to loosen soils through the roots and get oxygen into earth.

Jancis Robinson, M.W. writes: Most white Vinho Verde left me pretty cold; it seemed so tart and fruitless compared to the more sumptuous Albariños and so on produced in Rías Baixas in Spain to the north But clearly this part of Portugal has been touched by wine revolution and evolution just as much as any other, and producers such as Quinta do Ameal are in the vanguard, dragging the rest, I hope, in their wake.

This wine is fresh with both floral and pear notes, on the palate there's a mass of lemony acidity, has excellent body, is smooth yet keeps its refreshing qualities with nice length on the palate. Not your typical spritzy Vinho Verde.

Quinta do Ameal Loureiro 2006, Retail $15.99 Warehouse $12.99

Predominently associated with dessert style Porto wines, the Douro Valley is Portugal’s answer to Spain’s Priorat and France’s Roussillon region. Located in Northeastern Portugal, the Douro Valley grows its grapes in deep, carved valleys bordered by mountains. Historically, the region was the country’s port-producing center, with the city of Oporto as the worldwide seat of the port industry. Now, a few great producers are creating table wines from these same grapes to startling success. Many of these parcels are field blends, with several varietals planted alongside each other.

Lavradores de Feitoria is a collective project between 15 quality-minded Quintas in the Douro. Principally, there are some single Quinta wines (wines from only one estate). Not all quintas produce their own wine and only 4 or 5 are chosen each year. Blended wines are made by a strict selection of grapes from different quintas under the label Tres Bagos.

Climatic influences in the Douro are extremely important for the production of quality wines. The winters are often quite cold with heavy rainfall, while the summers are warm and relatively dry. Most of the Douro is terraced on steep hillsides. There are high levels of flaky schist in the zone with very small amounts of gravel and limestone. All of the quintas can benefit from the help in both viticulture and winemaking from the Lavradores technical team, made up of some of the best viticultural talent in Portugal.

Almost all of the wines are fermented in tank and then pass into small and larger oak barrels for ageing. The varietals stand up well to ageing in new and one year old French oak which looks to add an additional layer of complexity to these already quite complex wines.

The idea behind this project is to take advantage of the climatic and terroir advantages that each of the three Douro sub-regions has to offer. Some of the wines are made from only one of these zones, while some are produced from all three. The Douro Superior tends to produce wines of greater strength while the Cima Corgo and Baixo Corgo tends to produce wines with higher levels of natural acidity and elegance.

Lavradores Douro Red 2005, Retail $11.99 Warehouse $8.99

Tres Bagos is a more selected blend that originates from the three distinct sub-regions in the Douro. Matures in new and used French barriques for eight months.



Lavradores Tres Bagos 2004, Retail $15.99 Warehouse $12.99

The Beiras Region:

Then from the experimental wing of the Portuguese wine industry we find Filipa Pato. Filipa is the daughter of famed Bairrada winemaker Luis Pato. Having worked a harvest in Bordeaux, a year in Argentina and then to Australia, Filipa returned to her homeland to make wines from the Beiras. Beiras is the larger region in which Dao and Bairrada reside. Filipa has searched out old vine vineyards and continues to experiment with how the different soils and varieties interact to produce a final flavor component. Her red and white wines named ‘Ensaios’ literally translates to ‘Experiment’ in English.

The white Ensaios is a blend of Arinto and Encruzado. This is a very fresh white with a distinct nutty nose which leads to a concentrated mid-palate with a fresh and oily finish. There is ample acidity that keeps this wine refreshing.

Filipa Pato ‘Ensaios’ White 2006, Retail $17.99 Warehouse $14.99

The Ensaios Red is a combination of varieties Baga, Jaen and Tinta Roriz. Felipa’s thoughts were to combine the juiciness of the dominant Jaen to offset the structure of the Deeper Baga and Tinta Roriz.

Filipa Pato ‘Ensaios’ Red 2005, Retail $17.99 Warehouse $14.99

Currently less than 1% of the wine consumed in the US originates from Portugal. The wines of this blog are sure to open a few minds about the tremendous potential for the wines of Portugal.