A Taste of Portugal

It was a freezing January evening but those members of the Bristol Tasting Circle who braved the weather were well rewarded.  The theme of our first tasting of 2024 was ‘the Wines of Portugal’ and so we were pleased to welcome back Rachel, owner of local independent wine merchant Corks of Cotham (and of North Street!), to be our guide.  Portuguese wines have improved immeasurably over the last 20 years and are made more interesting by the wealth of native grapes grown there, an aspect that Rachel concentrated on with her selection.  (All wines in this tasting are available from Corks).

We began with a trio of whites.  I had enjoyed Soalheiro’s Alvarinho (£20) with its crisp, fragrant citrussy flavours previously and this latest vintage (2022) did not disappoint but Pormenor’s Branco from the Douro (£21) was new to me.  A lovely honied nose continued through onto the palate with tangy orange-peel flavours and a long, rich finish.

The 4 reds that followed were equally diverse with 2, in particular, catching both my, and my wife’s, attention.  Carlos Raposo’s Impecavel from the Dão region (£21) is a black-fruited, unoaked Touriga Nacional from 70- to 80-year-old vines.  Rather lighter than many examples of the grape, this is very drinkable now but, I think even better in a few years’ time.  For £1 less, the Tinto de Tareco from the hot, southern Alentejo region spends some time in talhas (the local name for amphorae – see some of my earlier Blogs for more information on these) to give a pure, fresh, clean, cherry-fruited juicy red.  Only 12.5% alcohol and good on its own or, I suspect, with red meats and hard cheeses.

And then there was the grand finale!  The Portuguese island of Madeira produces some remarkable wines, fortified with grape spirit to between 17 and 20% alcoholic strength and then subjected to a unique method of cask ageing involving alternate heating and cooling.  Rachel opened a 2014 vintage Sercial, the driest style, for us from famed producer Barbeito.  Wonderfully crisp and intense with flavours of nuts, peel and spice and a finish that went on for ever.  A very special wine and a very special treat (£55 for a 50cl bottle).

Lisbon’s Local Wines

We’re just back from a few days in Lisbon, one of the few capital cities in the world with vineyards within 20 miles of the city centre.  So, I expected that all the city’s restaurants would be majoring on the local wines from ‘Lisboa’ (the local spelling), Tejo and Setúbal.  Surprisingly not!  In fact, we didn’t see any of the wines from the immediate surrounding area on the lists of any of the restaurants we ate in.  The Douro, Dão and Vinho Verde regions further north were all well represented, as was the Alentejo in the south of the country, but from the local vineyards: nothing!  Which is a shame as some of their white wines would have made excellent accompaniments to the wonderful fresh fish and shellfish that featured on every restaurant menu and would have been ideal in the unseasonably warm weather – over 30°C (upper 80s F) during the day and still high 20s in the evenings, when we were able to eat alfresco.  Instead, we concentrated on the best of the available whites, generally delicious well-chilled Vinho Verdes.

But we did feel that we’d missed something and so, on our return home, I pulled a bottle of Vinhas de Pegôes from Setúbal (Majestic, £9.99) from our wine rack. A typical multi-grape blend featuring Arinto, Verdelho, Chardonnay, Antão Vaz, Fernão Pires and, no doubt, several others in proportions too small to mention. This started crisp and fresh on the nose with attractive citrus and some more tropical fruit flavours on the main palate and finished with an interesting slight sweetness, probably resulting from brief exposure to oak during fermentation and just after.  It went well with a spicy ‘Pica Pau’ recipe that we enjoyed while we were in Lisbon and sought out a version on-line to cook for ourselves; a good way to bring back great memories of a most pleasant trip.

Old and New

Marquês de Borba’s Vinhas Velhas (Old Vines) red (Majestic Wines, £11.99) is the perfect mix of old and new.  It comes from DOC Alentejo, one of Portugal’s newest designated wine regions (DOCs are the Portuguese equivalent of France’s Appellation Contrôlée).  It was only formally recognised in 2003 when a number of smaller areas were brought together to create the one DOC.  But for winemaker João Maria Ramos that’s where the ‘new’ ends; he is a great respecter of the old ways – the grapes for his wines are not crushed and pressed by modern machines but foot-trodden in traditional stone troughs known as lagares. 

And then there’s the grape varieties he chooses, championing lesser-known indigenous varieties, in this case using mainly Alicante Bouschet supported by Aragonez (the local name for Tempranillo) and Castelão.  Somehow a small amount of the distinctly non-local Syrah also found its way into the blend.  All from old vines giving richness and intensity and aged for a year in oak barrels for harmony and complexity.

The result is delicious and a real bargain. The deepest red in colour (Alicante Bouschet is one of the few wine grapes with red rather than colourless flesh), the wine is decidedly full–bodied thanks to the 14.5% alcohol but with lovely black plum and blackberry fruits and a clear backbone of vanilla and spice from the oak ageing. This is a wine that needs to be drunk with robust food to show at its best – beef or venison casseroles spring to mind or equivalent chunky dishes for vegetarians.

I decanted it a couple of hours before drinking and the wine was still developing in our glasses a few hours after our meal so I recommend giving it plenty of air so that it opens up to show all its flavours and richness.

This may not be an obvious Portuguese wine to choose and the label doesn’t exactly shout ‘buy me’ but lovers of big, generous reds should certainly have a look at this one.

Beyond the Familiar

When buying wine, particularly white wine, I find myself increasingly looking away from France.  It’s not that I don’t like French wines – I do – but there are just so many interesting and different grape varieties to explore.  And the more widely I look, the more exciting and attractive flavours I find. 

Take Italy for a start.  I’ve been a big fan of their whites for many years.  If you’ve not tried Greco, Fiano, Verdicchio or Vermentino, then do; you’ve got some delightful surprises awaiting you.  Then there’s the lovely whites from Albariño and Loureiro grown in Galicia in north-west Spain.  And don’t forget Austria’s Grűner Veltliner – I blogged about that a few weeks ago.

You may be familiar with all of those, but the 2 bottles pictured above feature varieties that fewer will recognise.  Firstly, Malagouzia.  That’s native to Greece and Giannikos Winery’s example from the Peloponnese region is a fragrant delight.  Tangy and fresh with lovely peach and apricot flavours, this would be perfect on its own or with fish, delicately cooked chicken dishes or light summer salads.  Local independent wine merchant Grape and Grind have it for £15.99 and it’s worth every penny.

With Fitapreta’s Ancestral from Portugal’s Alentejo region (Corks, £16.50) you get – not one obscure grape variety, but a blend of 6 including 2 – Tamarez and Alicante Branco – that the winemaker says have been rescued from near extinction.  I’ve not heard of either, so I won’t argue.  On pouring, the wine is almost gold in colour, so much so, that I wondered at first if it was oxidised.  But no, it was in perfect condition, rich, tangy, honeyed and savoury with real body to it; a friend who shared it with us thought that, tasting it blind, he would have said it was a red wine.  I know what he means; it’s likely that there was some skin-contact involved in the winemaking.  Not your standard easy-quaffing white, but a really enjoyable and deeply flavoured glass suited to more robustly flavoured poultry or, perhaps, young game birds.

2 very different bottles but each showing the benefits of looking beyond the familiar. 

A Shy and Reticent Wine?

The English are often described as ‘reserved’ people: shy, reticent, not very forthcoming.  But the word ‘reserve’ can have other meanings: I can reserve a table at a restaurant or set a reserve – a minimum sale price – at an auction, for example. But what does it mean to wine lovers?

Look along the shelves of your local supermarket or wine merchant and you’ll notice that Reserve (or a local variant such as Reserva or Riserva) is one of the words most commonly found on the labels.  So, does it mean that the wine is shy, reticent and not very forthcoming?  Unfortunately not!  But, what it does mean (if anything) varies a lot, depending on where the wine comes from.

Things are clearest in Spain.  There, Reserva denotes a red wine that has been aged for at least 3 years before being released for sale, at least one year of which must have been in oak barrels.  For whites and rosés, the figure is 2 years (6 months in barrel).  The requirements for Gran Reservas are longer: for reds, 5 years (2 in oak barrel), for whites and rosés, 4 years (6 months in barrel).

Across the border in Portugal, the rules for their Reserva are much less specific, simply requiring the wine to be from a ‘good’ vintage (how do you define that?) with an alcohol level at least ½% above the regional minimum (which varies from place to place).

Italy’s equivalent is Riserva.

This also varies from place to place – as do most things in Italy; it, too, denotes a certain minimum ageing, usually at least a year, although, for Barolo, it is as long as 5 years!  Often, higher alcoholic strength and other requirements are also included in the local rules.

And that’s as far as the regulated use of these terms goes.  Anywhere else and the word has no official meaning.  It might be used to suggest that the wine is of a higher quality, as in the French ‘Réserve du Patron’ or terms like Estate Reserve or Reserve Selection, or has seen some oak ageing, but, outside Spain, Portugal and Italy, none of this is guaranteed.

To my mind, we ought to reserve (sorry!) the use of the word to those places where it does have a legal meaning, but I’m not going to make a fuss about it because I’m English and too reserved!