The Wines of Portugal by ACC Art Books

Published in 2026 by Académie du Vin Library Ltd academieduvinlibrary.com Copyright © Richard Mayson, 2020, 2026 The right of Richard Mayson to be identified as the author of this book has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published in 2020 by Infinite Ideas Limited All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording or other electronic or mechanical methods, and including training for generative artificial intelligence (AI), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Translation into any other language, and subsequent distribution as above, is also expressly forbidden, without prior written permission of the author and publisher. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978–1–913141–95–0 Brand and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. Front cover: © Per Karlsson, BKWine 2/Alamy Stock Photo Back cover ©CrisRG/iStock Photographs courtesy of the author unless otherwise credited in the text. Illustrations on pages 175, 189, 288, 319 and 373 by Leo Duff. Publisher: Hermione Ireland Editor: Rebecca Clare Maps: Darren Lingard Indexer: Angie Hipkin Proofreader: Helena Nowak-Smith Printed in Great Britain

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. The wines of Portugal in history

2. Vines, grapes and wines

3. Atlantic wines

118

4. Mountain wines

207

5. Wines of the plains

282

6. Island wines

354

7. The rosé wines of Portugal

372

8. The sparkling wines (espumante) of Portugal

380

Appendix: approved grape varieties (and synonyms)

387

Glossary

398

Bibliography

405

Index

408

x THE WINES OF PORTUGAL

of Viuva Gomes and Luís Patrão and Eduarda Dias from Vadio, for their permission to reproduce the colour photographs in this book. All the remaining photographs are my own. Finally, my thanks are due to Rebecca Clare and the team working with her at Académie du Vin Library for their keen editorial eye. However, in a world where fashions and opinions change, no book is ever entirely complete or free from inaccuracies. These are of course my own responsibility.

INTRODUCTION

It was in the summer of 1979 that I bought my first book on wine. This was during my gap year between school and university, when I went to work in a bar and restaurant in Portugal. The establishment, Godot’s, was named after the elusive eponymous character in Samuel Beckett’s play because the owners thought they would be waiting forever for the building to be finished. I was given responsibility for the wine list, a job that sounds rather over-ambitious for an eighteen-year-old but in fact entailed making sure that the cellar was fully stocked. Nonetheless I took my responsibility seriously and went to the Livraria Betrand in Lisbon, the bookshop that claims to be the oldest in the world, to find a book on Portuguese wine. The only book available was one entitled Vinhos do Nosso País (‘The Wines of our Country’) published by the Junta Nacional do Vinho. The title and the publisher say it all. This was just five years after the demise of the authoritarian Salazar regime and, despite a revolution in the interim, the information that was available was still constrained and under central control. The book didn’t tell me a great deal. There were some faded photographs, useless maps, wine labels and some rather stilted facts, but it was enough to inspire me further. So when, during the winter of 1979–80, I set off touring the country by bus, I also went looking for vineyards and wine producers. Portugal in those days was a far-off place from the EU country of today. Harking back invokes the line in L. P. Hartley’s book The Go Between, ‘The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.’ My introduction to the country had come in 1971 when my parents and I arrived in Lisbon by sea on a holiday combined with a business trip. I recall my first day in Portugal as if it was yesterday, for I was 1

THE WINES OF PORTUGAL IN HISTORY 19

WINE AND WAR At the end of the eighteenth century, France was racked by revolutionary fervour and the royal houses in both Spain and Portugal did their utmost to prevent the spread of radical propaganda. Possessed by the idea that she was damned, Dona Maria became increasingly prone to nightmares and fits of melancholy. She ceased to reign in 1792 and was replaced by her second son, Dom João, as regent. Threatened by a Spanish invasion, the beleaguered João was torn between a policy of appeasing Napoleon or adhering to the terms of the Anglo–Portuguese Alliance. His mind was made up in the summer of 1807, when the French demanded that all Portuguese ports should be closed to British shipping, adding that ‘no people [and] no government has more reason to complain of England than Portugal’. This strengthened into an ultimatum that all Englishmen in Portugal should be arrested and their property seized. The Portuguese prince regent was unable to accept this and, in October 1807, a treaty was concluded between France and Spain which provided for the partition of Portugal into three. A month later French troops under the command of Marshall Junot invaded Portugal. The Portuguese royal family fled the country for Brazil. Junot declared that the house of Bragança had ceased to rule and the French tricolour was raised over the Castelo de São Jorge in the centre of Lisbon. This was the first in a series of three French invasions of Portugal, which were eventually repelled by British and Portuguese troops under the command of Sir Arthur Wellesley. Wellesley (later the Duke of Wellington) landed initially near the mouth of the River Mondego in August 1808 and for the duration of the Peninsular Campaign he and his officers spent the greater part of their time in the country around Torres Vedras, Leiria and Óbidos north of Lisbon. Oporto was recaptured for the Portuguese in May 1809 but the Peninsular War continued to rage in the hill country north of Lisbon for another three years. One of the most decisive battles of the campaign took place at Buçaco in September 1810, when Wellington defeated Massena on what he called ‘a damned long hill’. An obelisk above the famous Palace Hotel at Buçaco marks the site of the battle, the anniversary of which is still commemorated by the Portuguese army. In the aftermath of the Peninsular War, Portugal found itself in a political vacuum. Maria I died in 1816 and Dom João (residing in Brazil) was crowned João VI. He and his family were reluctant to return to a

20 THE WINES OF PORTUGAL

Vineyards at Quinta da Romeira, Bucelas. Wellington’s defensive Lines of Torres Vedras run through the estate (photo courtesy of Sogrape)

Portugal racked by Jacobinism. By 1819 the Council for the Regency was insolvent and William Carr Beresford, who had been put in charge of the Portuguese army, was unable to pay his men. He left for Rio de Janeiro in the hope of persuading Dom João to return to Portugal. In 1820, the army and populace of Oporto rose in revolt to demand the dismissal of Beresford and the return of the king, accompanied by a demand for an assembly, or cortes, and a liberal constitution. In 1821, Dom João returned to Portugal, leaving his eldest son, Pedro, to govern Brazil. Following João VI’s death in 1826, Portugal was pitched into renewed turmoil by Pedro’s younger brother Miguel, who led the absolutists in revolt against the liberals. The city of Oporto took Pedro’s side, and in 1832 the north of Portugal erupted into a vicious civil war. Pedro’s troops held the centre of Oporto while the Miguelites bombarded the city from above the Port lodges in Vila Nova de Gaia. In the meantime, gangs of armed militia terrorized the towns and villages of northern Portugal and the citizens of Oporto starved. As the liberal constitutionalists gained the upper hand, properties belonging to the clergy and absolutist nobility were seized and auctioned off. Much as in France some forty years earlier, the whole structure of Portuguese agriculture changed. Many vineyards in the south of the country were simply abandoned. As late as 1877, Henry Vizetelly en route to Bucelas was

THE WINES OF PORTUGAL IN HISTORY 27

Colares has a long history, as is made clear in this advertisement. The vineyards survived phylloxera and wines from the region were in vogue from the end of the nineteenth century until the early twentieth century

was a disaster for the Azores, leading directly to mass emigration to the United States. Half the population left the island of Pico.

RESTOCKING AND REPLANTING With its vineyards deeply rooted through a protective layer of sand, Colares remained blissfully immune from the effects of phylloxera (see pages 25–6) and by the time the plague had worked its way to southern Portugal a solution had been found. The American vines which had, in all probability, carried the phylloxera aphid to Europe in the first place were found to be largely resistant to the pest. The grapes from these vine species are not generally suited to winemaking in their own right as they produce wines with an off-putting musky or ‘foxy’ character. However,

28 THE WINES OF PORTUGAL

by grafting the European Vitis vinifera onto rootstock from Vitis aestivalis, rupestris and riparia from the east coast of North America, it was established that native grape varieties could survive and indeed flourish. The restocking and replanting of Portuguese vineyards proved to be painfully slow and erratic. The Visconde de Chanceleiros, who owned a property near Alenquer in Estremadura is credited with introducing the first American rootstock to Portugal at the end of the 1870s. But the Portuguese government prohibited the importation of American vines for a time, still believing them to be the cause of oidium rather than a cure for phylloxera. Some clandestine replanting on American rootstock took place, for example at Quinta da Boa Vista, which in 1880 became the first vineyard in the Douro to be grafted. Following pressure from both growers and shippers, the ban on American rootstocks was lifted in 1883 and replanting began in earnest. In much of the country, many smaller growers took the shortest route back to normal production. Isabella and Jacquez (Jacquet), both vinifera hybrids, and Cunningham (a cross between aestivalis and cinerea) were found to resist disease and produce large quantities of grapes. Whole tracts of land were replanted with these so-called direct producers and/or vinifera hybrids, most growers feeling that high yields more than made up for the poor quality of the wine. In local tascas or taverns throughout the land people became more than accustomed to drinking americano, sometimes known as morgangueiro because of its sickly resemblance to wild strawberries. Besides being unpleasant to drink, wines made from these hybrids contain a substance known as malvina (anthocyanin diglucoside). Rumours circulated that it was carcinogenic and it is still held that malvina is the cause of mental deficiency in remote Portuguese villages. The European Union banned the bottling of wines made from American hybrids and direct producers, although these wines continue to be produced in Portugal for local consumption. However, it is interesting that, in certain parts of the world (though not yet in Portugal), some newly bred hybrid grapes (branded as PIWI grapes) are gaining ground due to their resistance to fungal diseases, thereby enabling a significant reduction in the use of pesticides.

UNREST AND UPHEAVAL By the turn of the twentieth century the slow but steady return to prephylloxera levels of production in the rest of Europe led to a sharp decline

VINES, GRAPES AND WINES 61

Alicante Bouschet vines in autumn at Herdade do Mouchão in the Alentejo, where owner Iain Richardson prefers the deeper soils in the valley to the drier skeletal soils on the slopes

(or just ‘Alicante’ for short) was reputedly introduced to Portugal by the Reynolds family at Herdade do Mouchão in the northern Alentejo. It was taken up by a handful of nearby growers, as well as by some of the British Port shippers. Alicante Bouschet languished unrecognized for years, often interplanted with another Bouschet crossing, Grand Noir (see page 78). It was only during the 1990s that the hidden qualities of Alicante Bouschet were uncovered and since then the variety has grown exponentially in popularity, with the area planted doubling since 2015. It has risen to become the single most planted variety in the Alentejo. A reasonably heavy cropper but a late ripener, the chief advantage of Alicante is the amount of colour and structure that it brings to a blend. The skins and flesh are both red, teinturier or tintureiro in the local parlance, and it produces impenetrable inky-coloured wines, so that it was once known as Tinta de Escrever (‘writing ink’). On its own, Alicante Bouschet produces typically robust red wines with a certain (not unattractive) rusticity. Consequently I cannot honestly recommend very many varietal wines, but Mouchão and Quinta do Mouro (two of the best and most emblematic wines in the Alentejo) both contain

62 THE WINES OF PORTUGAL

significant amounts of the grape in their make-up. Since 2016, a number of shippers have also been deliberately including Alicante Bouschet in their vintage Ports. Australian winemaker Peter Bright has long been a fan of Alicante Bouschet and every so often we meet over a bottle for what we call an ‘Alicante moment’! Recommended varietal wines: Impar Wines, Sete Linhas, Alicante Bouschet (Alentejo); Herdade de Mouchão, Tonel No. 3-4 (Alentejo); Herdade do Rocim, Alicante Bouschet (Alentejo, Vidigueira); Vallado, Alicante Bouschet (Douro) Castelão/Periquita/João de Santarém ***/**** (9,515 hectares)

Castelão is the principal name for a grape variety that has long been planted under a number of synonyms all over central and southern Portugal, and is still sometimes known by its nickname, ‘Periquita’. In the 1970s (when it was almost certainly Portugal’s most planted red grape) it was known as Castelão Francês, although there was never anything ‘French’ about it. In the Tejo region it is also known as João de Santarém (John from Santarém). Other names have included Trincadeira/o in Lisboa/Estremadura (not to be confused with a different grape called Trincadeira growing in the Alentejo), Tinta Merousa in Santa Marta de Penaguião (Douro) and Bastardo Espanhol (‘Spanish Bastard’). A variety named Castelão Nacional is a synonym for Camarate. Castelão was first mentioned in 1531 by Rui Fernandes as being planted around the city of Lamego on the southern margins of the Douro. DNA profiling has shown it to be a natural cross between Alfrocheiro and a white grape called Sarigo (Cayetana Blanca). This makes Castelão a sibling of Cornifesto, Moreto/Malvasia Preta, Juan Garcia, Camarate and possibly Jampal. Castelão Francês gained prominence on the Setúbal Peninsula, having been planted in the nineteenth century at Cova da Periquita, above Azeitão, from where it gained its nickname. This was perpetuated by a famous brand of wine made by José Maria da Fonseca although, ironically, the wine called Periquita was never made entirely from the so-called Periquita grape. In his tome Portugal Vinícola, Cincinnato da Costa equates Periquita with João de Santarém but lists Castelão Francês as a completely separate variety. Some producers of João de Santarém (Ramilo, for example) maintain that this is a separate grape variety but, given its long presence in central Portugal it is likely that there are many different clones of Castelão Francês. Sadly, this

VINHO VERDE 121

crop and produce worthwhile wine. Some extremely worthwhile and sometimes ageworthy wines – red, white and the occasional fortified – are being made all the way down the Atlantic seaboard (which now also includes isolated vineyards on the maritime stretches of the Setúbal district and the Alentejo, covered in Chapter 5). There are also volume wines being made to meet key price points on domestic and international markets, with the Lisboa region responsible for a new wave of commercially popular, off-dry, fruity reds. With a few exceptions, the wines from Portugal’s littoral share a family resemblance. Levels of alcohol are rarely head-splittingly high and a streak of sprightly, sometimes enervating acidity is never very far from the surface. Some winemakers are actively looking to produce wines with lower levels of alcohol, at the same time as achieving physiological ripeness. Wines from vineyards closest to the sea may even capture a touch of Atlantic salinity. The Portuguese often use the term astringente (astringent), not as a pejorative but in its positive sense, to describe that combination of firm tannin and acidity that is the hallmark of Portugal’s best Atlantic reds. Astringency gives the wines longevity, perhaps equalled only by the best reds from Bordeaux. Although the grapes are different, there can be a real affinity with Bordeaux, a trait that was not overlooked during the phylloxera years, when this part of Portugal supplied the French with large quantities of red wine. It has taken over a century for wine producers in the Bairrada and Lisboa regions to rekindle pride in their own regions. Sometimes this is misplaced, especially with producers who try to obtain a high price for something that, by international standards, is rather mediocre. But there are many who are getting the balance right – in the vineyard, in the winery and increasingly with their sales and marketing. They are almost always the ones who have been prepared to reunite the vineyard with the bottle, seeing things through from the setting out of a new vineyard to presenting their wine at a tasting in Lisbon, London or New York. The key to making good wine in Atlantic Portugal is to be in total control.

VINHO VERDE The coastline north of Oporto is aptly named the Costa Verde (Green Coast). Behind the surf and white sandy beaches, a barrier of aromatic pine and eucalyptus yields to a riot of vegetation like a kitchen garden gone to seed. Step into a restaurant along the Costa Verde and you will

122 THE WINES OF PORTUGAL

SPAIN

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Santo Tirso

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Map 3: The Vinho Verde region

find caldo verde, ‘green broth’, made from local cabbages (couve galega) that are capable of growing to six feet or more in height. Once casting a literal shadow over the cabbage-fields, paths and byways was a giant lattice of pergola-trained vines producing Portugal’s most singular wine: Vinho Verde (pronounced veeng-yo vaird – the ‘e’ on the end is silent). When I first visited the region as a student at the end of the 1970s it came as something of a shock to find that most of the production of Vinho Verde was red. (In 1980, production of red was double that of

BAIRRADA 155

Baga vines in the Vinho do Bárrio belonging to Vadio. These bush-trained vines are nearly 90 years old (photo courtesy of Vadio)

of between 800 and 1,200 millimetres of rainfall a year, falling mostly during the winter months. Summers tend to be warm and relatively dry without the long periods of extreme heat that are often encountered inland and to the south. However, the rain-free period is relatively short and growers face a race against time to ripen grapes (especially late-ripening, thin-skinned Baga) before the autumn rains blow in from the Atlantic from mid-September onwards. As a result, harvests are frequently interrupted by torrential rain. The heavier soils are easily waterlogged, and if the rains arrive early, Baga’s tight-knit bunches start to rot on the vine before the grapes are fully ripe. Improved vineyard practices (including work on clonal selection and canopy management) have helped, but this issue has caused some producers to turn their back on Baga in favour of the other varieties.

Styles of wine It is not surprising that a number of distinct schools of winemaking have evolved in the Bairrada region. There are the traditionalists (led for five decades by consultant winemaker Rui Moura Alves, until his death in 2022) who still tread grapes by foot and ferment the grapes, stalks and all, in stone lagares, often without recourse to temperature control. These dark, fiercely tannic wines are left to develop for varying amounts

156 THE WINES OF PORTUGAL

of time in old wood (mostly toneis) before bottling. When the Baga is fully ripe, some of the finest red wines in the Bairrada region (and in Portugal as a whole) are made in this time-honoured way. These wines are built for the long haul and often need ten years or more in bottle before they are ready to broach. In a ripe vintage, these wines combine depth and concentration with the haunting wild berry fruit character of Baga. For the region’s most seasoned proponent of Baga, Luís Pato, the years 1975, 1995 and 2015 are ‘the best of the best’, and 2025 looks likely to be another successful year, continuing the pattern of years ending in ‘5’. In the 1990s a number of producers began to fall out with Baga, planting other grapes to produce totally different styles of wine (see producers Campolargo and Principal, below). But with improvements in the vineyards, smaller producers are making positive compromises, partially or totally de-stemming and using whole-bunch fermentation to gain more breadth of flavour from Baga. New oak barricas, at one time seen by some as a panacea, have largely been forsaken in favour of seasoned 500-litre oak barrels. Operating on a much larger scale, the cooperatives and larger private winemakers tend to de-stem the entire crop before fermenting on the skins in temperature-controlled stainless steel.

Producers In the 1920s and 1930s, a large number of merchants established socalled caves in the region. Some of the big names in Bairrada (and indeed in Portugal) date from this era: Caves Irmãos Unidos (now Caves São João), Caves do Barrocão, Caves Messias, Caves Aliança, Caves Valdarcos, Caves Solar de São Domingos and Caves Borlido. Until the 1970s, none of them owned vineyards, trading instead by buying in wine, often from outside the region. They were afinadores (‘winetuners’) rather than winemakers. The cooperative movement is firmly embedded in Bairrada, though it was never as dominant as in neighbouring Dão. The largest co-op is Cantanhede which, at its height, had 1,400 members farming 1,200 hectares of vines. The co-ops are responsible for producing much of the base wine that goes towards espumante. Greatly helped by EU finance, many smaller growers have broken away from the caves and co-ops to produce wine from their own grapes. This is where the enterprise lies. The eight ‘Baga Friends’ are successfully reviving the reputation of Bairrada: Luís Pato, Filipa Pato, Quinta das Bágeiras, Quinta da Vacariça, Quinta de Baixo (Niepoort), Sidónio de

COLARES 189

demarcations in 1908 but the abuse continued and prices began to fluctuate wildly according to supply and demand. The region was badly hit by the sudden collapse of the Brazilian market in 1930. Azeitão-based José Maria da Fonseca, which briefly owned Viúva Gomes and was exporting 35,000 bottles of Colares a year to Brazil, was forced to sell up. In the same year the Estado Novo stepped in and prohibited the blending of wine from the chão de areia with that from the so-called chão rijo (‘hard ground’). A year later the government established the Adega Regional de Colares, effectively a cooperative. Within four years of its creation, it claimed 507 out of a total of 690 hard-pressed growers in the region as members. Intended as a voluntary association, the Adega Regional gained a monopoly over the wines of Colares. From the mid-1930s until 1994, all grapes grown within the Colares region had to be delivered to the Adega Regional at Banzão to be turned into wine. The wine was then handed back to the producers or sold to merchant firms on the open market. Occupying a huge and rather magnificent building, the adega was poorly equipped and, over the years of its existence, Colares wines (red and white) became increasingly attenuated and standardized. When I first came to know Colares at the end of the 1970s, the wines of this once great region were literally a pale imitation of those being made a century earlier. With vineyards either abandoned or built on, the region was seemingly on its way out.

Colares: pines, vines and sand

190 THE WINES OF PORTUGAL

In the late 1980s (just in the nick of time), there was a valiant attempt to revive Colares. Tavares & Rodrigues, a local company belonging to Carvalho Ribeiro & Ferreira (and backed by multinational Allied Domecq), planted 12 hectares of vines in sandy soils behind Azenhas do Mar. Sadly, the costly initial investment didn’t last long and a decade later it was taken over by the charitable Fundacão Oriente. The vineyards of Colares deserve to be given World Heritage status and, at the time of writing, there is a campaign underway to achieve that. The topsoil is composed of fine sand blown in from the sea and ranges in depth from to 1 to 7 metres. Below this is a layer of calcareous clay. In order to plant these vineyards, huge trenches had to be dug through the sand to anchor the roots of the young vine canes in the clay soil below. Owing to the fact that the side of the trench could collapse without warning, vineyard workers would wear baskets over their heads to protect them against instant suffocation. Once the trench was filled in and their root systems established, the vines (especially Ramisco) would clamber over the sand like giant spiders. At intervals, the branches were then pegged down and layered to give rise to what appear to be up to half a dozen independent plants all rooted on a single mother vine. Consequently, six years after planting a hectare of 1,200 vines, the number would have multiplied to at least 4,000. The old vineyards that remain look rather like an unkempt kitchen garden. The vines, many of them centenarian and all ungrafted (pé franco), are protected from the relentless Atlantic sea-breezes by a few stunted apple trees and a network of windbreaks woven from local bamboo. The climate is generally mild but, with relative humidity above 60 per cent year-round, disease is rife and cultivation is challenging. During the growing season when the branches became laden with fruit, stout bamboo supports known as pontões are inserted under the vine to prevent the bunches of grapes both from being scorched on the hot sand and from rotting when it rains. Until quite recently, many of the growers were not unlike the vines: bent old men tiring from years of hard graft. More modern vineyards are trained on wires and protected from the wind by manufactured screens.

Styles of wine Both red and white wines are produced in Colares. The most highly prized Colares comes from the chão de areia (20 per cent of any blend may also come from the so-called chão rijo). Other wines produced

THE DOURO 209

The Mondego, the largest river entirely within Portugal, bubbles up as a spring in the Serra da Estrela and loops round the northern flank of the mountains, carving a broad basin to the south of Viseu. This region takes its name not from the mighty Mondego but the much smaller River Dão that rises near Trancoso and crashes over granite boulders until it joins the Mondego downstream from Santa Comba Dão (Salazar’s birthplace). Hemmed in by mountains, Dão is in the middle of the Atlantic–continental climatic transition. It has traditionally been the repository of some of Portugal’s finest red wines. After a period of decline in the mid-twentieth century, Dão has been undergoing a steady revival in fortune for both red and white wines. East and south of the Serra da Estrela the watershed belongs to the upper reaches of the River Zêzere, which flows south to join the Tagus (Tejo). The river defines a basin known as Cova de Beira, good fruitgrowing country that also produces grapes and wine. The northern part of Beira Alta and most of Beira Baixa are covered by the Beira Interior DOC, with the entire region entitled to use Vinho Regional/IGP Terras da Beira.

THE DOURO ‘The Douro’ is a loose description given to the 250,000 hectares of mountainous country that form the world’s oldest demarcation, dating back to 1756. Progressively enlarged over the years so that the region now stretches all the way to the Spanish border, the boundaries for Port and Douro wines are identical. The River Douro forms the axis of the region, the boundaries of which commence some 60 kilometres as the crow flies upstream from Oporto and extend another 90 kilometres eastwards. The river used to be the conduit for wine to reach the coast. Oporto, on the narrow river estuary, is the city and seaport from which Port wine (Vinho do Porto) gained its name and worldwide reputation. Port and Douro wines are intimately related and are regulated by the Port and Douro Wine Institute (IVDP) rather than the Lisbon-based Instituto da Vinha e do Vinho (IVV). The purpose of this section of the book is not to cover Port wine in any detail (see my companion volume, Port and the Douro), but to discuss the category of unfortified red and white wines and their relationship to Port, and to profile the leading producers. Their history goes back centuries, but it is only since 1979 that these wines have been given the right to the ‘Douro’ denomination to distinguish them from ‘Port’.

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Map 5: The Douro and Trás-os-Montes

10m

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Mirandela

Carrazeda de Ansiães

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210 THE WINES OF PORTUGAL

DÃO 263

(‘Ancient Vines’) are two the best white wines that I have ever tasted in Portugal: complex and beautifully poised, with restrained, stony fruit. The reds are also glorious, from an entry-level (and well-priced) Musgo field blend to varietal Musgo Alfrocheiro and Touriga Nacional wines from grapes grown on the foot-slopes of Serra da Estrela. Liquen Alfrocheiro is an outstanding silky-suave red with fine-grained tannins, and Liquen Vinha Centenária, which comes from two plots in Silgueiros (including about 30 per cent white grapes), really shows the character and finesse of the Dão region. Cabral de Almeida also produces wines in the Vinho Verde region (Camaleão) and Douro (OMNIA). *Quinta de Cabriz Quinta das Sarzedas, Carregal do Sal; www.cabriz.pt

Cabriz belongs to Global Wines, a company with interests in the Douro, Bairrada, Lisboa, Alentejo, the Vinho Verde region and Brazil. It was established in 1990 as Dão Sul and the Cabriz brand is now the largest in the Dão region. Wines are sourced from the company’s own vineyards in the south of the region (hence the original name), as well as the Mangualde and Penalva cooperatives, where Global Wines have longstanding contracts. Cabriz has a huge portfolio of Dão wines, all well priced, including an organic white and red as well as varietal wines from Encruzado and Touriga Nacional. I was impressed by their white Reserva, and their red Colheita Selecionada is a young, fruit-driven standard-bearer for Dão. The winery at Quinta de Cabriz at Carregal do Sal is open to visitors and has a wine shop and restaurant. In 2006, Global Wines took over the wine production at the historic Casa de Santar (see page 273). *Caminhos Cruzados Nelas; www.quintadapacheca.com

Caminhos Cruzados (meaning ‘crossed paths’) is part of the Portugueseowned Pacheca group with properties in the Douro (Quinta da Pacheca), Trás-os-Montes, Bairrada and Alentejo. Hotels and tourism are an important part of the business and Caminhos Cruzados operates from a striking brutalist concrete winery built in the shape of a cross. There are wine tours on offer and a beautifully laid out shop with views over the vineyard. Since the formation of the estate in 2012, Caminhos Cruzados has built up a holding of 40 hectares, with 14 hectares surrounding the winery near Nelas. There is a wide array of different grapes to draw on, from old, interplanted vinha velha (Quinta da Teixuga) and traditional Dão

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The brutalist winery at Caminhos Cruzados

varieties like Touriga Nacional, Alfrocheiro and Encruzado to Merlot, Syrah, Chardonnay and Semillon for a range of wines named Clandestino (after the clandestine emigration that depopulated rural Portugal in the 1960s and 1970s). The entry-level range called Titular includes a gently oaked varietal Encruzado and a well-priced red Reserva that is an exemplary modern Dão with a real sense of place. Caminhos Cruzados Reserva Encruzado is another exemplary wine, combining the buttery richness with the natural freshness and flinty tension that is so characteristic of this grape variety. Vinha de Teixuga Reserva Especial is a multi-vintage blend of oak-aged whites that is buttery soft. Caminhos Cruzados Reserva Tinto is a blend of Touriga Nacional and Alfrocheiro with grippy tannins and vibrant cherry fruit. Grapes from the older vineyards go into top-of-the-range wines named Teixuga (‘Badger’) and I was impressed by the varietal Vinhas da Teixuga Alfrocheiro, well integrated, rich and plummy after spending 18 months in oak. Quinta dos Carvalhais (Sogrape) Outeiro de Espinho Mangualde; www.sogrape.com/brand/quinta-dos-carvalhais

Portugal’s largest wine producer has long had a physical presence in the Dão region. In 1957, when the cooperative movement was at its

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appear to be much more modern and accessible in style but are still essentially Alentejo in character. Miguel’s son Luís Louro also produces an open, berry-fruit-driven red called Alento, from vines near Évora. Natus Vini Vidigueira; natusvini.pt

On the outskirts of Vidigueira, Hamilton Reis has built up his own project making low-intervention wines. These ‘garage wines’ from dryfarmed organic vines on the schistous soils that surround his family house, are actually made in the basement. When it comes to Natus Vini, Hamilton (who consults for a number of leading producers in the Alentejo) is a minimalist, seeking low intervention and minimal impact on the environment. Planted with Castelão, Alfrocheiro, Tinta Míuda and Trincadeira, the vines are bush trained as they used to be in this region, allowing the grapes to ripen in the shade, keeping the natural acidity along with lower levels of sugar. Hamilton Reis ferments most of his wines either in talhas (clay amphorae) or seasoned oak, with ageing in a mixture of talha, seasoned Portuguese and French oak barrels of various sizes and concrete. His intention is to produce red wines ‘with open colour, greater freshness and elegance’ and ‘unctuous, dense, rich whites’. Natus Branco from Antão Vaz, Roupeiro and Gouveio, fermented in talha, is demure but fruit driven, with lovely textural richness and a streak of lemony freshness. A second label called Situs is made entirely in stainless steel. Natus Tinto, with just 12.5% abv, based on a blend of Trincadeira and Castelão, is beautifully elegant and almost Burgundian in style, with summer berry freshness. As Hamilton Reis sums it up, ‘It’s a modern return to the past.’ I will happily drink to that! Quinta do Paral Vidigueira; www.quintadoparal.com

Marketed as an upmarket ‘wine hotel’ (and a member of The Leading Hotels of the World), Quinta do Paral belongs to Dieter Morszeck, a German investor who started with 1.5 hectares of vines in 2017. There are now nearly 60 hectares of vineyard surrounding the hotel, with the white Antão Vaz at the heart of three remarkable white wines, including a rather good varietal. The hotel restaurant is a good place to sample the pricey but polished red and white wines from this estate, as well as wines sourced from all over the world.

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Harvest at Herdade do Peso near Vidigueira in the Alentejo. In complete contrast to the smallholdings in the north of Portugal, this estate covers 450 hectares (photo courtesy of Sogrape)

Herdade do Peso Vidigueira and Portalegre; www. sogrape.com/brand/herdade-do-peso

Sogrape, Portugal’s largest winemaker, made its first foray into the Alentejo in 1991, buying in red wine from the Almodovar estate in Vidigueira. A year later they switched their allegiance to Herdade do Peso, a nearby estate belonging to the Palha family. Sogrape purchased the 465-hectare property outright in 1996 and extended the vineyards to cover 160 hectares, planting more Aragonez and Trincadeira, as well as Alicante Bouschet, Grand Noir and Tinta Miuda. The ripe, easy-going, southern style continues with well-made reds mostly bottled under three labels: Vinha do Monte, Trinca Bolotas (a wine that takes its name from the Iberian black pig found across the Alentejo region) and Herdade do Peso. Herdade do Peso Revelado and Herdade do Peso Reserva are ripe, well-defined estate reds that include Touriga Nacional and Syrah in the blend. The top wine from the estate is Icone, a dense, structured red capable of ageing in bottle. In 2018, Sogrape took to the hills, buying Quinta do Centro, formerly my vineyard, near Portalegre, where the intention is still to produce ‘the Barca Velha of the Alentejo’. With an experienced technical team led by Luís Cabral Almeida and Miguel Pessanha, as well as plenty of marketing clout, Sogrape will almost certainly succeed.