There has been a lot of fuss in the media of late about the dry red wines out of the Douro in Portugal, basically table wines made from old vines once used to produce Port. This low yielding hillside parcel of 8 hectares (about 20 acres) is planted to 50% Touriga Nacional and 50% Touriga Franca.
The grapes see all kinds of attention from leaf thinning to hand harvesting and sorting and the wine is moved by gravity flow (no pumping) and sees 18 months in new French oak. In other words, it gets the full Magrez treatment and it shows in the wine. This is as polished and seductive as anything we have had from the new crop of elite Portuguese reds. It resembles things like Pape Clement and Fombrauge in its harmony and seductive texture. A lot of the new breed of Douro reds are blowsy and rustic, but this can sit on the table with the aristocracy from other wine growing regions. Lush dark cherry fruit is the center piece with streaks of mineral and dusty earth. The balance is impeccable for the genre and it’s pretty showy already. A head turner, only 1600 cases produced.
