When five of the Douro’s leading producers came together in 2003, imbued by the same maverick energy as the Barolo Boys, the group that stirred a revolution in Piedmont, they were equally determined to bring about change and mischief to another classical region in need of a shake-up.

The five founding members – Quinta do Crasto, Niepoort, Quinta do Vale Meão, Quinta do Vallado and Van Zellers & Co – embarked on a globetrotting whirlwind of presentations, tastings and auctions that helped position the Douro as one of the world’s leading fine wine regions and travel destinations.

Covid-19’s hard stop led to an extended pause that dovetailed with inevitable generational changes.

A window of opportunity opened for necessary stocktaking and recalibration in light of changes within the members’ businesses, the Douro’s viticulture and the wine world at large.

In 2024, Cristiano Van Zeller decided to step back to focus on Van Zeller & Co’s XIX Rare Port Collection.

Meanwhile, the remaining four members are finding their own inner and collective dynamics anew, facing different but equally challenging obstacles to those that first motivated the creation of their shared brand.

Dramatic evolution

The Douro’s visibility and reputation as a source of both Port and table wines has evolved dramatically in the intervening years, not least thanks to the group’s efforts.

But if showing the singularity of the Douro’s dramatic meanders and the quality of the wines it produces is no longer a primary preoccupation, the struggles are no less meaningful.

Volatile markets, labour shortages, climate change and changes in consumer behaviour serve as a fluid, complex background to the ongoing (and much-needed) restructuring of the Douro and Port production ecosystems.

So what’s ahead for the four storied and intrepid producers?

They share a past full of larger-than-life characters whose legacy they’ve been tasked with preserving – albeit with their own strong, very distinct identities.

And they are doing just that, spurred by the desire to leave a mark of their own and build a sustainable, thriving future for their estates, all the while dealing with the opportunities and frictions of running a family-owned company.

After spending time with each of the Douro Boys/Girls it became clear that, at this particularly turbulent crossroads of past and future, they share two key goals: rediscovering the essence of the Douro – a sometimes elusive balance between elegance and rusticity – through the lenses of both its fortified and table wines; and reclaiming a clear voice in a very crowded and loud world.

Miguel & Tomás Roquette - Quinta do Crasto

Like many a febrile architecture student, I first heard of Quinta do Crasto as the place for which star architect Eduardo Souto de Moura designed, in a simple if puzzling exercise, an infinity-pool perched over the Douro.

The seemingly random commission somehow captures the essence of Quinta do Crasto: assertive gestures justified by the landscape they serve.

It’s easy to understand this ‘landscape first’ philosophy: the promontory-like outline of the estate, with vineyards crawling along the northern bank of the Douro up to 650m, is enthralling and self-evidently promising of great wines.

It was to bear out that promise that Jorge Roquette set out to restructure the vineyards upon taking control of the estate, alongside his wife (and third-generation owner) Leonor, in 1981.

‘My father was a visionary. He believed that this is a special place,’ says their son, Miguel.

‘Our major investment and focus is, and has always been, the vineyard; my brother and I simply carried on the path my father set.’

Indeed, the technical programme at Crasto remains paramount.

The core, longstanding technical team – director of winemaking Cátia Barbeta, director of viticulture Tiago Nogueira and consultant Manuel Lobo – oversees rigorous management and research.

Their work is spearheaded by the PatGenVineyard project, which is painstakingly propagating, and compiling geo-referenced genetic profiles of, the vines in Crasto’s two renowned centenary plots, Vinha Maria Teresa and Vinha da Ponte.

‘The genetic erosion that happened in the Douro Valley – as in most European wine regions – throughout the 20th century is heartbreaking,’ explains Barbeta. ‘This is our humble but deliberate effort to counter that.’

Preserving old vines and vineyards

A replica of the Maria Teresa vineyard – with 48 of the grape varieties identified in the storied parcel – has already been planted and the team’s excitement is palpable.

‘We can’t wait to make wine from that vineyard. Hopefully it will motivate others to follow suit [in preserving their old vineyards] so that our unique genetic heritage is not lost,’ says Nogueira.

Alongside the ambitious R&D projects, the Roquette brothers are also preparing to invest significantly, for the first time, in wine tourism.

‘So far – perhaps a bit arrogantly – our main focus has been the vineyards,’ says Miguel.

‘But we need to explore [the wine tourism side of the business] as well; there’s demand and we acknowledge the need to do it properly.’

Another priority is opening new markets, especially in these troubled times.

‘There’s a lot of volatility. But it’s also a matter of potential; we all [the Douro Boys] make great wines – and we need to make noise about it,’ he concludes.

Daniel Niepoort - Niepoort Wines

If there are big shoes to fill, they are definitely those of Dirk Niepoort, the charismatic 2023 Decanter Hall of Fame recipient who completely transformed his family’s eponymous Port house, questioning all assumptions – refreshingly rustling many feathers along the way.

Having known both Dirk and his son Daniel for many years, I often wondered how what sometimes felt like an impossible handover would be handled. I shouldn’t have worried.

Although personal circumstances precipitated a more brusque transition than both would have wished for, Daniel is easing into the leadership of Niepoort Wines with the blooming confidence of someone who is also finding himself along the way – and crucially avoiding a self-destructive emulation of his father.

Aware of, but unburdened by, an incredible, colourful legacy, Daniel’s approach is informed by his own openness, gregariousness and generosity.

Indeed, the shift from singular to plural is one of his main priorities.

‘Until now there was, inevitably, a big focus on my father. Now I want to open it more to the team,’ he explains.

‘Niepoort went through a period of spectacular growth and expansion. I believe we need to enter a period of consolidation and focus.’

In practical terms this means that he’s not seeking to expand the large number of projects and wines his father restlessly developed across Portugal.

Instead, he wants to develop the teams and the growers behind them, and take a deeper, holistic look at estate management.

He’s introducing biodynamic and soft-pruning practices at scale and considering how to bring back a certain ‘Douro edge’ to a range of wines that has long been defined by worldly sophistication.

Ultimately, however, it’s people that matter: ‘The relationships, the sense of community [among the team and local growers] are very important. It’s a source of confidence and joy for everyone.’

Jaime, Francisco (Xito) and Luísa Olazabal - Quinta do Vale Meão

Located in a secluded corner of Douro Superior, Quinta do Vale Meão is remote even within the Douro – a beautiful one-hour train ride away from Pinhão in the region’s heart.

As one approaches from the opposite bank of the river, the first building to emerge, tentatively, from the sculpted hills is the old, original Barca Velha warehouse, where Douro’s first premium table wine (still without a DOC stamp) was first produced and stored in 1952.

If there’s such a thing as ‘sense of place’, this is a quintessential example: an easily forgotten patch of landscape, cradled by a cursive meander, given a name and identity by Dona Antónia Ferreira, who first bought the land in 1877.

The estate was partitioned, over the years, with each generation’s passing, the grapes sold to Casa Ferreira, where Francisco ‘Vito’ Olazabal, a direct descendant of the matriarch, was president.

Vito’s umbilical relationship with Vale do Meão led him to painstakingly purchase the patchwork of parcels from his relatives.

In 1998, he left his gilded role to produce wines, alongside son Francisco ‘Xito’ at Vale do Meão.

A family affair

His daughter Luísa joined the project in 2005 to oversee marketing and exports; son Jaime followed in 2018 and is now responsible for national sales.

Following Vito’s passing in September 2025, the siblings are now adapting to a joint leadership without their father’s advice.

‘It hasn’t been easy. He was such an important reference point for us,’ says Luísa.

All three have a palpable, emotional connection with the estate; the setting for some of their most treasured memories, from childhood mischiefs to weddings.

On the other hand, their deep knowledge of its intricacies – not least its peculiar geology.

Unlike the heart of the Douro, which is almost exclusively schist, the soils at Vale do Meão are a mix of schist and granite, with alluvial sandy deposits close to the river – is allowing them to fine tune both vineyard management and wine production with confidence.

Under Xito’s technical direction, the wines have gained definition and poise and he’s increasingly leaning into the singular potential of each parcel. (Xito also consults at Vallado.)

The siblings are candid about the challenges of working together and for the family company; the emotional aspect is inescapable.

At the same time, this gives them a ruthless motivation and laser focus.

‘Our job – at Vale do Meão and with the Douro Boys – is to make the best wines so that people understand how special this place is,’ concludes Xito.

João Roquette and Francisco Ferreira - Quinta do Vallado

Another thread of Dona Antónia’s outstanding heritage, Quinta do Vallado has remained in the hands of the Ferreira family since the matriarch's uncle and father-in-law, António Bernardo Ferreira, bought it in 1818.

It started bottling its own wines in 1993, under the leadership of Guilherme Alvares Ribeiro and his wife (and fifth-generation) Maria Antónia Ferreira, following Sogrape’s acquisition of Casa Ferreira in 1987.

After the recent (reluctant) retirement of sixth-generation João Ferreira Alvares Ribeiro, his son João Roquette (related to the owners of Quinta do Crasto through his mother’s side of the family) has taken the helm alongside cousin Francisco Ferreira.

The two complement each other in both expertise and demeanour: Roquette overseeing marketing and exports, animated by a preppy entrepreneurial verve; Ferreira in charge of vineyard and cellar management, with a calm, listening energy running through his words.

Quinta do Vallado stands out – among the Douro Boys and most of the region’s producers – by having invested early and purposefully in wine tourism. Its on-site hotel opened in 2005 and has since been expanded.

Mindfully designed – as is the new cellar built in 2009 – to follow the character of the original estate and the outline of the terraced slopes, it embodies the relaxed sophistication also found in the estate’s wines.

But defining the style of a Vallado Douro DOC wine is an ongoing process.

A long journey of discovery

‘The Douro is a very old region; but also a very new one if you consider that we’ve only had a DOC for unfortified wines since 1979,’ says Roquette.

‘And we’re still discovering how best to do things.’

Ferreira echoes this exploration while describing the work he oversees in the vineyards and winery.

‘We’re only now truly understanding the best way to grow the best grapes for unfortified wines after centuries focusing on power and ripeness [for Port production],’ he explains.

‘It’s a change in paradigm and also an opportunity to reassess the value of our old vineyards and grape varieties,’ which his team has been genetically profiling across their older plots, echoing the efforts at Crasto.

A fundamental guiding principle at Vallado is to not follow trends and stay true to the quinta’s history and identity.

‘It’s perhaps the most important thing we can learn from Dona Antónia. And it’s also one of the core principles shared by all Douro Boys,’ Roquette concludes.

Leading lights of the Douro: Nine must-try wines

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For many, the Douro’s fortified wines are synonymous with red grapes. The region’s viticulture, however, has a more complex history, with field blends dotted with white varieties.

Mostly harvested together, they played a balancing role in red Port and contributed to its complexity and ageworthiness. White grapes-only vineyards, and hence white grapes-only Port, accounted for a minimal share of production.

Beyond viticulture and tradition, another factor was at play: with many Port shippers also trading in Sherry, the latter made up the ‘white’ share of their portfolio. Focusing on red Port meant a clear commercial message and a neat split.

Houses with a historical specialism in white Port – notably Kopke – remained curious outliers. Then, the turn of the third millennium brought a new generation of winemakers and blenders to the fore.

Both Tiago Alves de Sousa, the fifth generation at the helm of his family’s winery, and Carlos Alves, director of viticulture and oenology at Kopke, agree that this influx of new blood was a decisive factor in white Port’s recent rise.

For Alves, the white category’s rapid evolution is woven into the similarly impressive development of Douro still wines. ‘It meant a greater understanding of the potential of different varieties and of how they perform in specific terroirs. And a major realisation has been that the Douro is a region of great whites,’ he says.

Alves de Sousa agrees: ‘This exploration, through the lens of Douro [still, unfortified] wines, meant greater awareness of the potential of each variety, some being more aromatic, others more structured, and so on.’

‘The incredible evolution of the white category is the best thing that happened in Port in the 21st century’

Tiago Alves de Sousa

Necessary changes

Technical precision, stylistic focus, curiosity about the potential of old, often overlooked, stocks of white Port and a desire to experiment and test Port’s limits have all seen white Port grow in both quality and diversity.

The IVDP (Instituto dos Vinhos do Douro e Porto), which regulates wine production in the region, took notice and, in 2007, introduced a much-needed update to the regulations by creating age-indication categories for white Port (similar to those for red tawny).

‘It was a necessary change that also created more interest, among both producers and consumers,’ Alves says. ‘The incredible evolution of the white category is the best thing that happened [in Port] in the 21st century,’ says Alves de Sousa, whose family also has a long, maverick tradition of producing the style.

It reflects, he says, an overall increase in quality and a reconnection with the region’s traditions – while also revealing a fresher side of Port.

Indeed, white Port has developed along two parallel paths: expressively aromatic, fruit-driven styles, with little to no maceration, produced as ideal ingredients for Port & Tonic, Portugal’s favourite aperitif; and more structured, complex iterations, often with some skin-contact during fermentation, designed as components for age-indicated blends or, less frequently, colheita (single-harvest) bottlings.

The following selection showcases this exciting diversity. For those of us for whom a bottle of white Port is a fridge-door staple, it’s exciting to see the category truly coming to life.

18 delicious white Ports:

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London fine wine merchant Berry Bros & Rudd (BBR) announced last Friday (1 August) the appointment of Rob Symington, of Symington Family Estates (SFE) as its new UK managing director, effective from September.

He will step down from his current position as co-CEO of the family company – which he held since February 2025 alongside production director Charles Symington – while remaining non-executive director at SFE and the family’s majority-owned UK importer, Fells.

Rob Symington’s appointment consolidates the de facto partnership between SFE and BBR following the joint acquisition – with equal shares – of Hambledon Wine Estate in 2023. Symington already served as chair of Hambledon, a position that he will also retain.

Symington will report directly to CEO Emma Fox and will oversee sales, customer strategy and marketing in the UK. The new hire builds on BBR’s expansion to the US, announced in June, with Jamie Ritchie, formerly of Sotheby’s, appointed managing director of international and auctions, with oversight of business in the US and Asia.

Read tasting notes and scores for Symington Family Estate’s latest fine wine releases here

Continuity in change

Rob Symington’s departure, seven months after his appointment as co-CEO, brings the number of family members involved in SFE’ daily operations down to eight. They divide winemaking, operational and commercial responsibilities across four Port houses (Graham’s, Cockburn’s, Dow’s and Warre’s), five Douro wine brands – Quinta do Vesúvio, Quinta do Ataíde, Altano, Prats & Symington (of Chryseia fame), and Vértice (one of Portugal’s leading sparkling wines) – and their UK import business Fells. SFE also produces wine at Quinta da Fonte Souto in the Alto Alentejo, Casa de Rodas in Monção & Melgaço, and holds a 50% stake in Hambledon, in partnership with BBR.

Fourth generation Rupert Symington will add co-CEO responsibilities to his chairman position, while Charles remains as production director and co-CEO. Meanwhile, five other members of the fifth generation – Charlotte, Harry, Anthony, Vicky and Teresa – will step into new leadership roles within their respective areas across marketing, sales and wine tourism, both at SFE and Fells. (The eighth family representative, Hugh Symington, leads the family’s USA importer, Premium Port Wines, in San Francisco.)

‘Few family-owned companies in the world have the level of family involvement that we are so fortunate to have,’ said Rupert Symington, following the announcement of Rob’s departure. ‘I am very proud that nine members of our family work alongside our exceptional colleagues, all of whom play a vital role in delivering our long-term vision.’

Millennial shift

The last decade has been one of significant transformation and intriguing expansion for SFE – to which Rob Symington was himself instrumental. After joining SFE in 2017, he spearheaded the consolidation of the company’s sustainability strategy, leading to SFE’s attainment of the B-Corp stamp in 2019 (the first wine company in Portugal to obtain the certification) and the release, in 2024, of the company’s first comprehensive sustainability report. These are anchored by focused initiatives such as the launch of Altano Rewilding, a Douro blend whose sales finance the nature conservation non-profit Rewilding Portugal.

Non-fortified wine production has gathered pace and recognition, both through the development of the Douro brands and the successful foray into other regions. As part of a move to attract a new generation to Port, SFE also revamped its fortified range with products such as Graham’s Blend Series and Cockburn’s White Heights and Ruby Soho (as part of a relaunch and rebranding of Cockburn’s whole collection) launched with more casual drinking and mixology in mind.

Tourism and hospitality have been other key areas of development. Quinta do Bomfim saw the opening of two restaurants – Casa dos Ecos and Bomfim 1896, opened in 2020 and 2022 respectively – overseen by Michelin-starred chef Pedro Lemos; Quinta da Fonte Souto opened a new visitor centre in 2021. And in June 2025, the private members club Matriarca opened its doors at a three-storey townhouse in the heart of Porto. The space is an extension of the online club launched in 2023 and houses a restaurant, wine bar, cellar shop, cocktail bar and wine academy.

‘It has been a privilege to help lead our family business and work with my family and colleagues during this exciting chapter for Symington Family Estates,’ said Symington in an official statement released by SFE. ‘Since I joined, we’ve expanded into three new wine regions [Alentejo, Vinho Verde and Hampshire], implemented a widespread innovation programme across our port brands, made big strides in wine tourism, and significantly raised sustainability standards.’

His efforts – along with other fifth generation representatives – have been instrumental in bringing SFE to the 21st century with a fresh, dynamic appeal, capable of transcending the company’s storied lineage. It’ll be interesting to see what Rob brings to BBR while his fellow fifth generation Symingtons will hopefully build on the momentum at SFE.

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It’s now a worn cliché to say that good winemakers are those able to produce a good wine from a bad vintage.

Perhaps it could be added that a superior vineyard is able to withstand severe climatic conditions and still deliver outstanding fruit.

Both statements seem validated by the Vintage Ports from the troubled 2022 growing season; few but characterful, with some outstanding examples showing off some of the Douro Valley’s best sites.

Scroll down to see notes and scores for the key Vintage Port 2022 releases

Delicious imperfection

Although overall lacking the concentration and robust structure of a so-called classic vintage, there is an aromatic nuance and vibrancy to the 2022 releases that make them particularly expressive.

‘Imperfect [Vintage] Ports make perfect Tawnys,’ said David Guimaraens, technical director and head winemaker at The Fladgate Partnership (Taylor’s, Fonseca and Croft) at the London tasting that marked the release of the 2022 Vargellas, Sentinels and Guimaraens.

Imperfect growing seasons, on the other hand, can yield seductively quirky Vintage expressions that speak vividly of their place. It’s therefore good to see that albeit not a ‘classic’ vintage, producers allowed some 2022 offspring to become Vintage rather than future Tawny elements.

If blending a Tawny is the art of correcting complementary imperfections, the decision to release a Vintage is the acknowledgement of a potential that deserves not to be interfered with.

This potential is usually measured as a function of cellaring longevity; perhaps early-drinking pleasure should also be part of the equation. The hallmark of the best wines tasted below is their energy and approachability, with stand outs showing equal amounts of depth and structure, filigree aromas and concentration, muscle and elegance.

Future considerations

Declarations always involve complex decisions not only about the potential quality and longevity of the wines but also on market conditions and stock management – the role of the Port blender is as much about ‘management of futures’ as it is about technical expertise and alchemic intuition.

So I wonder if the limited declaration was not a product of caution and long-term planning, as much as of the admittedly challenging cards dealt by the 2022 growing season.

Especially in the face of increasing demand for old Tawny (for context, according to Guimaraens Taylor’s sold 20,000 litres of 20 Year Old Tawny in 1990; last October 2024 figures were already at 160,000 litres) and the wholesome Vintage offering following back-to-back declarations from 2015-2018.

Challenging conditions

The hot, dry year had growers and winemakers on the edge of their seats until harvest.

‘The 2022 growth cycle was one of the most challenging in the Douro,’ reads the report of Symington Family Estates (SFE), ‘with the three months before the harvest being among the hottest and driest ever recorded.’

Christian Seely, managing director of Quinta do Noval, also reported on the testing conditions: ‘2022 was a year of extremes, both very hot and very dry. Rainfall was only 364 mm during the growing season, 27 mm below the 1970-2000 average.

‘We experienced recurrent heatwaves, in early July and in early August, with prolonged periods of temperatures over 40°C, with a peak of 45,5°C in mid-July.’

Fighting fit

On the other hand, record temperatures and drought meant that disease pressure was virtually absent. Although smaller and fewer, the berries were healthy and, added Seely, ‘remarkably, the vines remained surprisingly green and free from water stress’.

Likewise, the team at SFE, ‘were astonished by how well the vines performed under such unprecedented conditions. While the grape bunches and berries were smaller than usual, they delivered concentrated wines with lifted aromas and remarkable purity of fruit.’

The challenging season allowed the best sites to show their greater resilience and consistent ability to deliver quality and complexity. Virtually all the releases are therefore either single quintas or exclusive vineyard selections – not least of Noval’s Nacional plot and Vesúvio’s Capela.

The freshness and aromatic profile delivered by these vineyards in such a hot vintage is indeed remarkable. Whether the plants will struggle in the subsequent vintages remains to be seen – the 2024 harvest seems to indicate they are successfully coping, with Guimaraens anticipating a possible wide declaration in 2026.

Sculpted by terroir

Sense of place and purity were the common denominators across Vintage 2022 declarations.

‘At harvest, the red wines had a very clean aroma and very bright, rich colours,’ explained Carlos Alves, head winemaker and master blender at Sogevinus (Kopke, Burmester, Barros and Cálem).

‘After gaining further vividness in the cellar, the group declared ‘a vintage for all four of these single Quintas [Sāo Luis, Arnozelo, Cálem and Barros], each exhibiting individual differences and representing a sense of place.’

This is indeed a Vintage collection where the uniqueness and resilience of specific terroirs really came into focus.

Taylor’s Vargellas displays its trademark florality with vividness and allure; Burmester’s Arnozelo has a perfectly outlined herbaceous savouriness; Dow’s Senhora da Ribeira displays a distinct powdery minerality with its tannins covered in graphite; Sandeman’s Seixo is easily spotted for the elegant smoky veil cloaking the dark fruit.

Vintage Port 2022 at a glance

Growing season: Extremely dry with a succession of heatwaves in July and August. Throughout June, July, and August, 58% of the days saw temperatures exceed 35ºC, with 23 days recording temperatures above 39ºC. A record temperature of 47ºC was measured in Pinhāo on 15 July.

Overall character of the wines: Great aromatic nuance and sense of plaice, with the wines reflecting the characters that make their parent vineyards distinct. Refined tannic frameworks, purity of fruit and floral/herbal details. Recurring sense of freshness, both as a product of the fruit definition and lively acid.

Stand-out releases: Quinta do Noval Nacional; Capela da Quinta do Vesúvio; Taylor’s Sentinels.

Drinking window: The Vintage 2022 Ports will benefit from some years in bottle and will surely be at their best 10 to 20 years from now. The best expressions, however, show an incredible vividness and aromatic nuance that deserve to be appreciated immediately.

Pick of the bunch

Among the Vintage 2022 releases, Quinta do Noval’s Nacional confidently stands out. The unique, dramatic plot produced a remarkable wine, with depth and concentration offset by mineral precision.

It shows an alluring freshness and drinkability while also having the power and concentration to improve in decades to come – a great accomplishment that reflects the singular, and somewhat mystifying, character of the ungrafted vineyard.

But there is no shortage of intriguing, limited-production labels for Port collectors to seek out.

A collector’s bounty

SFE released the fifth edition of Capela do Vesúvio (following 2007, 2011, 2016 and 2017), hailing from three small plots within the Vesúvio estate: Capela, Escola and Vale da Teja. A truly beautiful wine that couldn’t be more evocative of schist soils, wild herbs and summer rains.

From The Fladgate Partnership, the inaugural bottling of Taylor’s Sentinels did not disappoint. It’s produced with fruit from selected vineyards in the Pinhāo Valley, planted across four estates (Terra Feita, Junco, Casa Nova, and Eira Velha).

Located within the original 1756 demarcation, its name references the granite pillars (‘marcos de feitoria‘) once used to delineate the perimeter of ‘highest-quality Port’ areas.

The shipper plans to release Sentinels in non-classical Vintages, allowing those best-performing sites to stand out, very much like a single quinta.

Meanwhile, as SFE is yet to release half of its 2022 single quintas; the vintage will surely unveil other pleasant surprises. With Capela da Quinta do Vesúvio, Quinta do Vesúvio, Dow’s Quinta da Senhora da Ribeira (all tasted and scored below) and Graham’s Quinta do Tua Vinhas Velhas (exclusive for the brand’s Matriarca club members and at the Graham’s Lodge in Vila Nova de Gaia) already on the market, SFE have held back four other bottlings.

Graham’s Quinta dos Malvedos, Dow’s Quinta do Bomfim, Warre’s Quinta da Cavadinha and Cockburn’s Quinta dos Canais will remain in their respective cellars for future release.

For those sceptical about the dynamism of the Port industry, the 2022 Vintage is a good rebuttal.

As the Douro region goes through important challenges – both climatic and socioeconomic – and significant shifts in the structure of the wine trade, it’s encouraging to see producers asserting the singularity of vineyards and celebrating the resilience of both vines and men.

Vintage Port 2022 – key releases scored and tasted:

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Mourinho famously described himself as ‘The Special One’ after he was appointed Chelsea manager in 2004.

The Portuguese coach had just led Porto to the Champions League title, and he vowed to bring success to his new club.

Mourinho lived up to his self-styled nickname, as the Blues won back-to-back Premier League titles. The moniker stuck, so it seemed an obvious choice when he decided to launch a wine brand.

‘The Special One’ is a blend of Touriga Nacional, Touriga Franca, Tinta Barroca and Sousão and is selling for €144 per bottle.

Mourinho said: ‘As someone who values precision, quality and excellence in every endeavour, I am proud to present my very own wine, “The Special One”.

‘Handpicked from one of my favourite regions in Portugal, this wine reflects the spirit of my homeland and my relentless desire to enjoy every moment in life.’

Rival manager Sir Alex Ferguson was scathing of Mourinho’s taste in wine after they had a post-match drink in 2004. ‘He was certainly full of it, calling me boss and big man,’ said Ferguson. ‘But it would help if his greetings were accompanied by a decent glass of wine. What he gave me was paint-stripper.’

Mourinho admitted he is not ‘one of the bottle’, but he brought a high-end Barca-Velha to their next meeting.

Chelsea eventually sacked Mourinho following a poor run of results, but he went on to enjoy great success at Inter Milan and Real Madrid.

He then won another Premier League title during a second stint at Chelsea, but his reputation has since been dented after disappointing spells at Manchester United, Tottenham Hotspur and Roma.

Mourinho is now at Fenerbahçe in Turkey, but he still refers to himself as ‘The Special One’, and he believes his wine is special too. ‘Whether you’re celebrating a victory or spending time with people you care about, this wine is meant to be shared with someone truly special,’ he said.

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Created a mere two years ago, in 2022, the 50 Year Old Tawny category is the youngest of all legally approved styles of Port. It’s perhaps a surprise for many lovers of the storied fortified wine and it was a decision producers and shippers lobbied intensely for.

The IVDP – Intituto dos Vinhos do Douro e do Porto eventually conceded to their calls for a way to value the unique stocks of old wines and the investment and skills that goes into maintaining them.

The evolution of the Port trade – with key markets, not least the UK, shrinking in volume but steadily increasing in value – further justified this stance.

Scroll down for tasting notes and scores for Quinta da Noval’s 50 Year Old Tawny

Appetite for premium

The reception of the 50 Year Old expressions released so far has been enthusiastic, both in the primary and secondary markets. The category’s creation – and the perseverance of producers – has certainly been vindicated.

Given the appetite for these premium releases it was therefore unsurprising to witness the excitement and anticipation following Quinta do Noval’s announcement that its first 50 Year Old Tawny was in the works. The first batch, released in October, has nearly sold out.

Carlos Agrellos, technical director at the iconic quinta – best known for its dramatic, ungrafted Nacional plot – says that the creation of the category fit perfectly with the programme to revitalise old stocks that he was tasked with upon joining Noval in 2017.

Still, the decision to create a 50 Year Old Tawny required careful consideration.

Consistent excellence

‘When the category was created we looked at our stocks to understand whether we could create a quality 50 Year Old that we could maintain as part of Noval’s portfolio,’ Agrellos explains, highlighting the complexity of Port winemaking – not merely a matter of oenological and blending skill but also, and crucially, of stock management.

He continues: ‘The goal would never be to release a one-off, one-hit wonder. We needed to be sure that it could become a [permanent] part of our range – and that we could produce a wine that would be consistently and objectively distinct from and superior to our 40 Year Old.’

Having tasted the new creation – alongside Noval’s other aged tawnies – upon bottling of the first-released lot, I am witness to the fact that Agrellos and his team have succeeded. The 50 Year Old is markedly distinct from its younger counterparts, with a definition and depth that makes it stand out with assertive ease.

When asked to explain the decisions behind the blending of the 50 Year Old, Agrellos says that the team ‘wanted the personality of a true “old tawny” to express itself.’

Youthfulness and freshness (hallmarks of Noval’s most prized Vintage Ports and younger tawnies) were not front of mind.

‘We needed to allow the complexity developed in barrel to be clear. By now we know very well which barrels impart this special personality. The beautiful umami and citrus flavours that develop with time.’

This reflects another of the greatest skills of master blenders: knowledge of the ‘cellar’s terroir’ and the ability to create a stylistic lineage by developing an understanding of the barrel stock akin to that of vineyards.

‘As the wine concentrates flavours, acidity, sweetness and alcohol they need to be “corrected” – this exercise, seeking balance, is the essence of blending a tawny.’

‘The creation of this category is extremely important for Port in general – it truly communicates the uniqueness and skill behind each bottle,’ Agrellos concludes.

Quinta do Noval 50 Year Old Tawny

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Portugal’s Douro Valley has long been celebrated for its fortified Port wines, but in recent years, a new contender has emerged – its still red wines. At the 2024 Decanter World Wine Awards (DWWA), Douro reds achieved an impressive 12 Gold medals, setting a new record for the region.

This milestone marks a significant leap from the fluctuating one to four Gold medals each year seen over the past decade, underscoring Douro’s rapidly growing reputation for producing exceptional-quality still reds.

The success of these reds is a testament to the power of indigenous grape varieties and the deep connection between winemakers and their land.

Scroll down to discover 15 red wines to try from the Douro

By focusing on local grape varieties such as Touriga Nacional, Tinta Roriz and Touriga Franca, winemakers in the Douro are capturing the true essence of their terroir, producing wines that are both unique and expressive of their origin.

Portugal, once overshadowed by more established wine regions, is now being recognised by experts as a key area to watch for both quality and value. The Douro valley, with its dramatic landscape and rich history, is leading this charge, proving that its still red wines are just as worthy of attention as its iconic Ports.

Below, explore 15 reds worth seeking out from DWWA 2024, with more to discover at awards.decanter.com

Quinta do Crasto, Touriga Nacional 2019

97 Platinum

£59.50 Carruthers & Kent, Shelved Wine, The Great Wine Co, Winesquare

Tightly wound dark cherries, plums and blackberries unravel on the palate, joining fine-spun tannins and graceful, fruit-led acidity, all then coming together on the long, gently spiced finish. Classy and sophisticated. Alcohol 14.5%

Quinta do Pégo, Vinhas Velhas 2016

96 Gold

quintadopego.com

Redolent of warm summer evenings, enhanced by lily and bergamot florals with sumptuous black cherry and plum fruit. Very polished with silky, fine-grained tannins and texture. Superb. Alc 15%

Quinta Nova de Nossa Senhora do Carmo, Reserva Terroir Blend 2022

96 Gold

quintanova.com

Glistening with red fruits, blue floral notes and a touch of spice. Exquisitely fresh and grippy with a pomegranate pith acidity and striking menthol zing to the finish. Alc 14%

Rui Roboredo, Castello d’Alba Limited Edition 2020

96 Gold

ruimadeira.pt

Charming dark plums, berries and violet florals weave around a tight-knit structure of firm tannins and bracing acidity. Very lush and textured with plenty of ageing potential. Alc 14.5%

Vallegre, Touriga Nacional 2016

96 Value Gold

POA £ Lanchester Wines

Lavish ripe plum, black cherry and blueberry fruits burst onto the palate and flow seamlessly through the juicy tannins and granitic mineral structure. Long and graceful. Alc 13.5%

Quinta do Crasto, Roquette & Cazes Touriga Nacional-Tinta Roriz-Touriga Franca 2020

95 Gold

£26-£28 Millésima, The Great Wine Co, Winesquare

A bewitching delicacy of violets intermingles with sultry wild berry fruits, awakening the senses in a perfect harmonious symbiosis. Silky and joyous, a fabulous treat! Alc 14.5%

Quinta do Tedo, Tinto 2019

95 Gold

£21.30 Lant Street Wine

Beaming with cassis, blueberry and minty florals nicely interspersed among attractive, carob-laden tannins, lingering acidity and creamy texture. Lengthy, with a bergamot-infused finish. Alc 14%

Quinta dos Castelares, Tinto 2022

95 Value Gold

castelares.com

Flavours of glossy, gleaming dark plums and mulberries wrapped in luscious textures and soft tannins, with an intriguing minty core and remarkable length. Alc 14%

Symington, Altano Rewilding Edition 2021

95 Value Gold

£10.50-£14.95 Noble Green, Ocado, Tesco, Vinotopia

A true taste of the Douro with a heft of ripe cherries, plump raisins and an injection of violet florals. Wonderful rounded structure and a lingering finish. Alc 13.5%

Terras do Grifo, Grande Reserva Tinto 2017

95 Gold

rozes.pt

A brooding beast, brimming with inky florals, dense black fruit and dark chocolate-coated gingerbread. Powerful yet composed, with velvety tannins and a luxurious mineral finish. Alc 14.5%

Van Zeller Wine Collection, Zom Reserva Tinto 2021

95 Value Gold

zomwines.com

Enchanting plum and blackberry fruits with liquorice, underpinned by a cedar oak core bringing a savoury element. Polished and fine-grained with focused acidity and robust structure. Alc 13.5%

Asda, Extra Special Douro 2022

93 Silver

£7.50 Asda

Fresh nose with floral nuances, aromas of sour cherry, red and black berries and some rhubarb. Light and fresh style. Alc 13%

Casa Ferreirinha, Castas Escondidas 2019

93 Silver

£47.99 Hedonism, Liberty Wines, Shelved Wine, The Fine Wine Co

A core of ripe black fruit, with elegant chocolate and savoury aromas, hints of dried herbs and leather. Nicely managed tannins on the palate and a long, fruity finish. Alc 13.5%

The Society’s Exhibition Douro Superior 2020

93 Silver

£16 The Wine Society

Intense aromas of wild black fruits with smoky nuances and hints of violets and chocolate. Dense and structured tannins. Alc 13.5%

Vicente Faria Vinhos, Quinta Vale Santa Luzia Reserva Tinto 2020

93 Silver

vicentefaria.com

Fresh nose of aromatic herbs, with notes of dates and dense dark berries. Very concentrated style yet elegant, with an earthy finish. Alc 14%

Search all DWWA 2024 award-winning wines

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Even in the spectacular vineyard landscape of Portugal’s Douro Valley, Quinta do Vesúvio stands apart. Partly that’s because of its sheer scale: 326ha of land, 130ha of it under vine, spread over 32 valleys and seven hills. Partly it’s because of the diversity of altitude and aspect that its vineyards enjoy. But mostly it’s because of the quality and longevity of the Ports and table wines that it produces.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for eight wines from Quinta do Vesúvio

Located on the south bank of a sinuous bend in the river high in the Douro Superior, the wine estate celebrated its bicentenary in 2023. But its saga goes back much further than the first time vines took root in its soils.

Johnny Symington, chairman of Symington Family Estates, owner of Vesúvio since 1989, charts its history back to 1565. At that time it was known as Quinta das Figueiras and grew a combination of citrus fruit, almonds, olives and – as the name suggests – figs. Only after António Bernardo Ferreira bought it in 1823 were vines introduced, and a new name found: Quinta do Vezúvio (in old Portuguese spelling).

Pioneer vision

Ferreira was, in Symington’s words, ‘completely and utterly bonkers’, given the remoteness of Vesúvio’s location, 120km – or two weeks on horseback – from Porto. ‘He had incredible foresight,’ says Symington. ‘He started bulldozing without any bulldozers, building terraces and stone walls on a scale never seen before in the Douro.’

Soon there was a winery, a large house, a church, a school and an aqueduct – all constructed using only men and horses. In 1823, 100 people were working at Vesúvio; by 1825, it was 500. Planting the vineyards in the steeply sloping schistous rock took them 13 years.

Ferreira was proud of his work, writing: ‘All the English have poured praise on my lodge and held that they cannot find another adega [winery] to match mine in the Douro.’ But he didn’t enjoy his creation for long, dying in 1835. His son, also called António Bernardo, died a decade later, leaving the quinta to his wife (and first cousin) – Dona Antónia Adelaide Ferreira, one of the most remarkable figures in the history of the Douro.

Dona Antónia put Vesúvio on the map, selling her wines in London and hosting lavish parties and dinners. When phylloxera came, she kept all the workers on to plant citrus and olive trees – even mulberry trees to breed silkworms – and to build a 16km wall around the property. When the railway came in 1887, she talked the railway company into giving Vesúvio its own station.

Eyes on the prize

Even then, the Symington family knew Vesúvio, with Symington’s great-grandfather buying Quinta da Senhora da Ribeira, on the opposite bank, in 1890. ‘They spent 100 years looking across the river, thinking: “Not a bad place…”,’ he says wryly.

Then, in 1989, the Ferreiras put Vesúvio up for sale. ‘My father [Ian Symington] basically said: “There is only one opportunity that we will ever have to buy Vesúvio. It’s now or never.” So we did, and we preserved his view.’

This jewel of the Douro, however, had lost some of its lustre. There were only 60ha of vines, and no wine was being produced (the grapes were sold). ‘It was by no means abandoned, but it was not in good shape, so it was an opportunity for us to restore it to its former glory, and that’s taken us the past 30 years,’ says Symington.

Vines and wines

In that time, the vineyard has more than doubled in size to 133ha, much of it systematically planted with key varieties such as Touriga Nacional, Touriga Franca, Tinta Amarela and Tinta Roriz. Touriga Nacional is mainly confined to the higher altitudes and northwest-facing slopes, sheltering from the intense summer sun. While the much more heat-tolerant Touriga Franca is found on west-facing spots – and is assuming greater influence as temperatures rise.

Beyond its growing conditions, Vesúvio’s trump card is its diversity. Vines are planted at altitudes from 106m to 462m, on a mix of socalcos (dry stone wall terraces), patamares (literally ‘platforms’ or unwalled terraces) and old stone terraces. They are planted in two-vine rows and three-vine rows in a multiplicity of orientations.

The quinta typically bottles only about 7% of its production as table wine and 4% as vintage Port – the latter wholly foot-trodden in Vesúvio’s original granite lagares. So that palette of blending options is crucial.

Balance and biodiversity

It also means that the wines sourced from this remote, inhospitable place – where annual rainfall totals 300mm on average, and less than half that in some years – combine their expected structure, power and concentration with a remarkable perfume and elegance. They have an ethereal character that never leaves them as they age, often for decades.

Drought conditions are tough for vines, but good for minimum-intervention farming. As the estate has been farmed more and more sustainably in recent years, its biodiversity has reaped the rewards. Wild boar, foxes, badgers and wildcats live here; eastern imperial eagles, Bonelli’s eagles and Egyptian vultures nest on the cliffs.

Proof that for all the relative ease of modern transportation, Vesúvio clearly remains not only a wonderful place to grow grapes, but also a wild, remote, spectacular landscape. It’s certainly one that would be familiar to António Bernardo Ferreira and even those who came before him.

Quinta do Vesúvio: Eight wines to try

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Dirk van der Niepoort has become the 40th recipient of the Decanter Hall of Fame award, which honours those who have made significant contributions to the modern wine world.

‘It is no exaggeration to say that Niepoort has turbocharged Portuguese wines’ reputation and profile,’ wrote Portugal expert Sarah Ahmed in Decanter magazine’s October 2023 issue, in a special feature on Niepoort as this year’s Hall of Fame prize winner.

Sometimes described as a maverick, Niepoort manages to blend a love of tradition with a desire to flout convention and question authority, said Ahmed, who is the regional chair for Portugal at the Decanter World Wine Awards.

After joining the family’s 19th-century Port business in 1987, Niepoort pioneered premium-quality, Portuguese still wines, ‘blazing a trail for Douro DOC wine’, said Ahmed. He has since developed projects in other regions and countries, sometimes linking up with other top winemakers.

Paul Symington, of Port house owner and wine producer Symington Family Estates, described Niepoort as ‘a transformative figure in the Portuguese wine scene’.

Symington also praised Niepoort for breaking down barriers between producers, including Port houses. ‘Dirk – especially with the growth of Douro DOC wines – encouraged an atmosphere of collaboration and openness. Pioneering and very refreshing, it changed a lot of the dynamic.’

Niepoort became MD of his family company in 1997 after taking over from his father, Rolf. He is known for being generous with his time, sharing his knowledge – and bottles from the cellar – with everyone from fellow winemakers to interns.

Whilst Niepoort’s entry-level Douro DOC, Fabelhaft, constitutes a significant proportion of the company’s production, the producer’s influence stretches well beyond the Douro today.

Niepoort acquired Quinta de Baixo in Bairrada in 2012, and Quinta da Lomba in the Dão in 2014, and also makes wines in Vinho Verde, Alentejo, Madeira, the Azores, Germany and Spain. Niepoort’s ‘Nat Cool’ project, meanwhile, has focused on lighter, minimal intervention wines.

Last year, Niepoort’s Redoma 1996 Tinto and Branco both came second to red Bordeaux and white Burgundy at two blind tastings of iconic red and white wines.

‘Twenty years ago, French wines were the reference point; our wines always looked poor and stupid next to them, but Portugal is getting very close,’ Dirk Niepoort told Sarah Ahmed. ‘My most important mission has been to put Portugal on the map, not just look after the company or the Niepoort name.’ 

Port is still an important part of the picture. A commemorative bottle of Niepoort 1863 in a Lalique decanter set a record auction price via Sotheby’s in 2019. 

Read the full article on Hall of Fame 2023 award winner Dirk Niepoort

Rising Star 2023 award winner: Brenna Quigley

Decanter also announced that this year’s Rising Star award winner is wine-focused geologist and podcast host Brenna Quigley, based in California. 

Now in its third year, the Rising Star prize was created to recognise up-and-coming wine world talent.

Quigley is known for both exploring and explaining the complex concept of terroir. She has worked with Californian wineries such as Quintessa in Napa Valley and Carlo Mondavi’s Raen label in Sonoma, and also visited Burgundy to provide geological mapping, wrote Clive Pursehouse, Decanter’s US editor.

Carlo Mondavi said, ‘As one of the world’s foremost wine geologists, Brenna has helped us tell the story of our wines in a new, very fundamental way; not just in the vineyard but by connecting the minerality in wine’s flavour profile to the story and geological history of our site.’

Quigley’s academic research had focused on geological mapping and structural geology, and she worked extensively in the mining industry.

However, she said she first heard of the concept of ‘terroir’ whilst working in the tasting room at Kunin Wines in Santa Barbara upon graduation.  

Her podcast, Roadside Terroir, is described as ‘an audio travel guide for wine lovers who want to dig into the subject of terroir’, and takes inspiration from a series of books entitled Roadside Geology. 

Quigley believes terroir doesn’t have to be the sole preserve of higher-end wines, and that the concept is attractive to a younger demographic.

In an interview featured in the October 2023 issue of Decanter magazine, she said, ‘You may have in your glass a simpler wine that’s perfectly enjoyable, or “drinkable”, but it doesn’t mean there are not sophisticated things happening in the ground and in the weather patterns that make such a wine what it is.’  

Read the full article on Rising Star 2023 award winner Brenna Quigley

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The Douro river is the beating heart of Portugal’s Port wine region. Terraced vineyards are planted on its steep valley slopes and for centuries it was used to transport barrels from the wineries downstream to the cellars of Vila Nova de Gaia for ageing. So there’s no better way to get acquainted with the region than by visiting the river. And there’s no better place to experience the river than Octant Douro.

Built into the hillside terraces of Castelo de Paiva in the lower Douro and stretching right down to the river bank, this hotel is part of Octant Hotels, a collection of eight boutique, design-led properties across Portugal. Conveniently located between the city of Porto and the vertiginous vineyards of the upper Douro, it makes a perfect base for exploring the Douro Valley – which celebrates its 20th anniversary as a UNESCO World Heritage Site this year.

Bringing the outside in

The stunning scenery is an integral part of the hotel’s design. Constructed from schist stone and glass, it blends into the landscape, with floor-to-ceiling windows offering different vistas from every corner you turn. Take a dip in either of the two outdoor infinity pools and you’ll instantly feel at one with nature.

Each of the 55 luxurious rooms and six suites has stunning river views, many with a private terrace or balcony, including a private pool suite and a panoramic suite to maximise those Instagram-worthy moments. Design in neutral shades contributes to the sense of calm – especially in the hotel’s spa. Here the indoor pool and sauna again benefit from full-length windows so you can soak up the views as you relax or enjoy a bespoke treatment.

Take to the water

If you’d prefer to unwind closer the water – and step back in time – book a boat-trip in Octant I. This carefully restored rabelo boat pays homage to the cargo vessels once used to convey barrels and people along the Douro. Guests can also hire private boats to explore the twists and turns of the 897km river; a morning tour includes a picnic breakfast of fresh local produce on a secluded island.

Hire a kayak to explore the river under your own steam. Electric bikes are also available if you’d prefer to stay on dry land; or put your best foot forward on hiking trails that head up into the mountains surrounding the hotel.

But of course, you’re here for the wines too, so save time to visit local producers. Hotel staff can arrange winery visits and tastings – it takes around an hour-and-a half to drive to the heart of the Douro’s vineyard region along winding roads, but it’s a trip worth making.

Wine and dine

Octant Douro champions both regional wine and food producers on its menus, embracing the concept of localism by sourcing ingredients from nearby organic farms. The hotel’s ‘Producer Week’ series invites different winemakers to visit the hotel to give tutored tastings; while chef Dárcio Henriques prepares an accomplished six course fine-dining menu, pairing their wines with dishes in the elegant Raiva restaurant – an ideal location to savour the sunset as you dine.

Visiting wineries have included Real Companhia Velha, the oldest wine company in Portugal, and iconic Quinta do Noval. On our visit, Ports from fifth-generation family producer Vieira de Sousa took centre stage. Pairings included rosé Port with an eye-catching beetroot and radish carpaccio garnished with edible flowers; and extra dry white Port with zucchini flower stuffed with turbot and shrimp.

In fact the hotel has over 150 Port references on its list, including vintage bottles such Quinta do Noval Nacional 1963, selections from Niepoort and notable single-quinta wines such as Croft’s Quinta da Roeda 2012. Look out for top Douro table wines too: bottles such as icon red Chryseia 2019 from Prats & Symington and Casa Ferreirinha Barca Velha 2011. For more local flavour drop into one of the tastings hosted by the hotel’s sommeliers daily at 5pm in English and Portuguese.

The more casual A Terra Bar & Canteen serves salads, risotto and cheese and meat platters, plus wood-fired pizzas. The peaceful terrace overlooking the Douro is a perfect spot to enjoy a Portonic and go with the flow… But however you spend your time here, you won’t fail to fall in love with this unique Portuguese wine region during your stay.

See the Octant Duoro website for further details.

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The Fladgate Partnership has launched its first table wine division after purchasing around 200 ha of vineyards in Vinho Verde, Dão and Bairrada.

The company, which produces Taylor’s, Croft, Fonseca and other Port brands, purchased the quintas from Ideal Drinks for an undisclosed sum.

They include the 53 ha Quinta da Pedra, one of the leading estates in Vinho Verde, located in the heart of the Monção and Melgaço sub-regions.

It has also taken on another Vinho Verde estate – the 24 ha Paço de Palmeira, which is famed for producing high-quality Loureiro in the Minho sub-region.

In the Dão region, The Fladgate Partnership has snapped up the 50 ha Quinta de Bella, whose wines include Dom Bella and Bella.

The company has also purchased two estates in the nearby Bairrada DOC: the 56 ha Collinas São Lourenço and the 14 ha Quinta da Curia.

Those estates grow native varietals such as Touriga Nacional, along with international varieties including Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Pinot Noir.

It means that The Fladgate Partnership now controls 197 ha of vineyards spread across three leading still wine regions in Portugal.

‘This strategic move is a testament to our persistent commitment to Portugal’s winemaking heritage and the exceptional quality of wines produced in Vinho Verde, Bairrada and Dão,’ said CEO Adrian Bridge.

‘With the integration of the talented teams, we are confident in our ability to further elevate the reputation of these outstanding Portuguese wine regions.’

The company exports 93% of its Ports to 105 different countries, and it has noticed a growing demand for Portuguese table wines in international markets.

That inspired it to purchase the quintet of quintas from Ideal Drinks, a company established by Portuguese businessman Carlos Dias in 2010. The Fladgate Partnership said that all staff will be retained at each estate, with no layoffs.

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An often asked question is: where is the next big rosé region? There are many fabulous individual producers and stellar rosés outside of Provence. But their greatness is more often down to the hand of an imaginative, visionary winemaker than to a specific terroir or variety.

It is very rare to find a united region with a shared vision for quality rosé – and even more so where the producers gather to discuss their wine styles, quality and marketing.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for 20 Portuguese rosés to try

Quality Douro rosé took off around 2015 when winemaker Jorge Alves produced his first high-end rosé with Quinta Nova.

In a mere eight years, a large range of exciting wines has appeared. At the same time Justina Teixeira took over her family estate Quinta da Barca. Teixeira, a scientist by training, is a team player with a passion for the wines of her region. She had already gathered a group of producers to discuss and taste together.

With that in mind, Teixeira had a vision for a bigger conference, which took place at the end of November 2022, supported by her local town Mesão Frio, the western gateway to the Douro. The aim was to demonstrate the quality of Douro rosés.

The three day conference included tastings with producers discussing in detail their winemaking, philosophy and current issues. There was a presentation by Alves on rosé winemaking and vineyard visits and I also gave a presentation on the international market and regional styles.

Challenges for rosé production

At the second event in May this year, the theme was climate change. Acclaimed Portuguese viticulturist, Ana Mota, discussed how she was adapting her work in the field. Producers noted that maintaining freshness was a big challenge, making grapes from the highest plots, furthest from the Douro River, increasingly attractive. Wineries also talked about a move towards organic production.

Alves talked of his work on a project making rosé in the Azores. Paulo Russell-Pinto of the Instituto dos Vinhos DO Douro e DO Porto (IVDP) presented papers on the market for Douro wines, the decline in Port sales and the rise in sales of table wines. He also demonstrated the marketing potential for pink Port as a cocktail ingredient.

I talked about the impact of climate change on rosé styles and the importance of preserving local identity. Producers commented that there was increasing consumer pressure to create paler rosés. Issues such as the cost of grapes and shortage of workers were also raised. A third event is already being planned for 2024.

Tasting Douro rosés

The rosés tasted at both conferences were a reflection of the Douro Valley’s varied terroir. The soil here is made up of many different schists offering diverse qualities and profiles. Vineyards are planted on slopes facing in all four directions and at altitudes ranging from close to the river to over 650m.

There is also significant temperature variation between the cooler, damper western vineyards in the Baixo Corgo to the hotter, drier vineyards to the east towards Spain in Douro Superior. Baixo Corgo rosés showed great freshness, fine minerality and mouthwatering acidity. While the vineyards in Douro Superior produced rosés with a fuller body and weight.

What stood out was a consistency in style and an almost universal high quality for all of the wines. The enthusiasm of the producers was also notable. Many were making several styles of rosé – including barrel-aged reservas and aiming at gran reserva.

The majority of rosés tasted were made with the same local grape varieties that are used to produce Port, including Touriga Nacional, Touriga Franca, Tinta Barroca, Tinta Roriz and Tinto Cão.

The exceptions were Pinot Noir and Chardonnay – which are allowed for the DOC sparkling wines – with some winemakers using Pinot Noir in their vinho regional (IGP) rosés. One producer also had some Cabernet Sauvignon planted in the 1980s.

Portuguese rosé wines: 20 to try

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All five producers have a longstanding family tradition of making Port, even if – with the exception of Niepoort (a sixth generation Port shipper) – it was sold to shippers who, until 1986, enjoyed a monopoly over export sales.

Nowadays, the other members of this famous five – Quinta do Vallado, Quinta do Crasto, Van Zellers & Co and Quinta do Vale Meão – proudly append their own name to top flight Ports too. And they are ramping up fortified wine production.

To mark their 20th anniversary, the Douro Boys kicked off a two-day celebration with a once-in-a-lifetime tasting (for them and us) of fine and exceedingly rare Ports dating back to the 1860s.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for 15 Ports from the Douro Boys’ 20th anniversary tasting

The arch collaborators also each contributed a soupçon from precious pipas (casks) for a moreish 950-bottle limited edition Douro Boys’ Anniversary Very Old Tawny Port. ‘You add a tiny amount of one wine, maybe one percent only, but this may dramatically change the character of the final blend,’ explained Cristiano van Zeller.

Since selling Quinta Vale D. Maria in 2017, he invested heavily in relaunching Van Zellers & Co as an independent Port shipper, having acquired an eye-popping collection of Very Old Tawny Ports from long-standing contacts. The black book is not so little when your family has been linked to the Douro since 1620 and once owned Quinta do Noval.

Claiming similarly distinguished roots, cousins Francisco Ferreira (Quinta do Vallado) and Francisco Olazábal (Quinta do Vale Meão) are descended from Dona Antónia Adelaide Ferreira who, respectively, owned and established their quintas during the 19th century.

For many years, grapes and Port wine were sold under the family’s Ferreira (Port shipper) brand and, famously, in Meão’s case, additionally for one of Portugal’s most renowned table wines, Barca Velha. Following Ferreira’s sale in 1987, both quintas switched their focus to Douro DOC wine.

But Port was not forgotten. Quinta do Vallado swiftly made its mark with mellifluous Tawny Ports with an indication of age (10, 20, 30 or 40-year-old) and impeccably sourced ultra-rare Very Old (19th century) Tawny Ports.

‘It has been a good decision to focus more and more on Port wine, because it is unique and the base of our region,’ said Ferreira; ‘Vallado was among the first to release a 50-year-old Tawny Port [the category was introduced last year],’ he added, proudly.

Once the Olazábal family took control of the property at Quinta do Vale Meão, they wasted no time making a Port with the extra grapes; fortuitously, 2000 was a terrific (generally declared) vintage.

Olazábal has set aside Tawny Port each year and Meão’s recently launched 10-Year-Old, will soon be joined by 20-year-Old and Colheita (single vintage) Tawny Ports. ‘Everything is from our own vineyard; we are one of the few producers who do that,’ he observed.

When he acquired Quinta do Crasto in 1918, Constantino de Almeida – founder of Constantino Port house – brought stock with him. Not even Miguel Roquette, his great grandson, has yet tasted the 1886 Colheita, of which just five bottles remain.

However, in commemoration of 400 years of wine production, precious 19th century Ports from de Almeida’s stock were blended to produce Quinta do Crasto Honore Very Old Tawny Port.

Roquette showed it alongside Quinta do Crasto Colheita 1997. ‘It was an important year because the family started to bottle Tawny Port again,’ said Roquette. Crasto will launch 30 and 40-year old Tawny Ports this year.

Being a shipper, Niepoort boasts a continuous Port winemaking tradition since 1842. During this time, successive generations of Niepoorts have worked alongside the Nogueira family, the shipper’s Master Blenders, forging a fine reputation for wood-aged Ports.

With its antique 19th century pipas and glass demijohns of aged stock, the company’s lodge in Vila Nova de Gaia provided an atmospheric setting for the tasting, it providing particularly handy when Dirk Niepoort decided, spontaneously, to fish out his grandfather’s earlier bottling of Niepoort VV Very Old Tawny for comparison with his own.

Both Ports were based on Niepoort’s magnificent 1863 pipa which produced a 2018 Lalique bottling (the world’s most expensive Port ever sold) and the outstanding bottling we tasted from 1992, Dirk’s eldest son’s birth year.

If you have followed the Douro Boys, new releases usually mean just that: young Douro DOC wines. But with the luxury of time to build stock, and now that Douro DOC wines are firmly on the map, all five Douro Boys are producing must-try mature Ports. Is there a better way to commemorate an anniversary?

15 Ports from the Douro Boys tasted and rated

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Oh, to have been a fly on the wall at the launch of Quinta do Noval Nacional Vintage Port 1931. This iconoclastic Port from a single 1.7ha plot of five-year-old vines bucked the Douro’s staunch tradition of blending parcels (‘vinhas’) and estates (‘quintas’). How else to obtain balance, complexity and finesse in an extreme continental climate? Yet Nacional is widely regarded as the Everest of vintage Ports and priced accordingly.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for 12 of Portugal’s top fine wines

Almost a century later, Noval has marked the launch of its new ‘Terroir Series’ single-parcel Douro wine range with Quinta do Noval Vinhas da Marka 2019 at £170 per bottle. Others have caught up, too, producing top-end single-parcel vintage Ports – for example, Graham’s Stone Terraces from Quinta dos Malvedos and Croft’s Quinta da Roeda Serikos.

There has also been an increase in Douro wines – a category pioneered by Quinta do Crasto, who first produced Vinha Maria Teresa and Vinha da Ponte in 1998.

Given the region’s reliably scorching summers, you might have thought that making single-parcel Douro wines was even more challenging than making single-parcel vintage Port. However, as Hedonism’s head buyer Alistair Viner observes, finding standout parcels of vines is an inevitable consequence of getting to know your vineyards intimately.

‘As with any area – Burgundy, Bordeaux, California – producers find parcels to bottle that, year on year, can stand on their own two feet as an exceptional wine,’ he explains. ‘It’s a direction that naturally happens as producers get more akin with vineyards.’

From monopoly to monopole

The catalyst for this process was the end of the Port houses’ traditional monopoly on wine sales in the mid-1980s. This opened the floodgates for making Douro DOC wine. It allowed quintas to produce and sell their own wine, as opposed to selling grapes or wine to Port houses. Conversely, it also encouraged Port houses to invest in vineyards and winemaking.

From near contiguous plots, Crasto’s two charismatic big hitters (Maria Teresa and da Ponte) could not have made a better case for this growing niche of distinctive, distinguished single-parcel wines.

For chief winemaker Manuel Lobo, Maria Teresa’s east-facing orientation results in more afternoon shade and edgier tannins. On the other hand, Ponte always produces rounder tannins (and a darker fruit spectrum) due to its southeast-facing location and relatively high sunshine hours.

Similar attention to detail has paid dividends at Noval under AXA Millésimes’ ownership. Each vineyard is managed autonomously by an individual local team ‘devoted to making the greatest wines they can produce in the conditions that nature has given us,’ says CEO Christian Seely.

Their number includes Quinta da Marka, a predominantly west-facing 11ha estate owned by the Agrellos family. Located on slightly deeper soils planted to the estate’s oldest vines, Vinha da Marka – a 1.45ha parcel – also benefits afternoon shade from two adjacent mountains. So says Carlos Agrellos, Noval’s technical director.

Vine and bottle age

It is surely no coincidence that all 12 wines recommended below hail from resilient old field-blend vineyards. Having scores of well-adapted traditional Douro grape varieties (red and white) plays into complexity and balance. The same applies to deep-rooted old vines, which find water and nutrients in even the harshest conditions.

If Crasto’s reds are a guide (they boast a 20-year track record), this inherent balance allows wines to retain their delicious fruit for a decade or more – while developing glorious complexity with age. With the trend towards extracting less and an increasing emphasis on freshness, recent vintages might age better still; only time will tell. My drinking windows are conservative.

A matter of character

For producer Dirk Niepoort, old vines may be the key to balance and concentration, but the impetus for departing from traditional blends boils down to character. As he describes it, there will be a wine that shouts: ‘I am this and not part of a blend.’

One or two barriques always stood out, he says, requiring longer ageing. Take Niepoort Museu dos Lagares, for example, a single-vineyard offcut from Niepoort Charme. By contrast, Niepoort Turris is aged in large foudres: wilder, and with distinct forest notes, it is a different animal altogether.

House style is important too. Describing them as ‘chalk and cheese,’ Hedonism’s Viner says that the single vinha wines from Crasto and Niepoort resonate with consumers’ willingness ‘to spend more to discover new things and expand their knowledge’.

While Crasto’s offerings are opulent, Niepoort’s championing of elevated sites and earlier picking produces a fresh, elegant expression which is low in alcohol. At the other end of the spectrum, at 15.5% alcohol, Ramos Pinto Vinha da Urtiga favours a denser style.

Lofty ambition

Priced from £100-£300, the single vinha wines under review are pitched somewhat below the £450 release price of Casa Ferreirinha ‘Barca Velha’, the original Douro icon which launched in 1952. There again, they are new or have a much shorter track record. Are they worth it?

For Lay & Wheeler buyer Fiona Hayes, Quinta do Noval Vinha da Marka 2019 has ‘a significant USP’ which ‘needs to be conveyed to those drinking it.’ Here is a unique, extremely low-yielding, single-parcel bottling (‘smaller than a lot of grand cru Burgundy’) with a prestigious name behind it.

She believes it ‘sits nicely alongside other highly sought-after Mediterranean wines at that price point, such as Pie Franco from Casa Castillo in Murcia and the Super Tuscan Tignanello.’

Keen to support fine wines ‘beyond the usual suspects’, Theatre of Wine’s Daniel Illsey lists Douro single vinha wines ‘to illustrate the potential of the terroirs and the skills of the makers.’ If Quinta do Noval Nacional Vintage Port is Everest, this Himalayan Douro dozen offers alternative peak drinking.

Portugal’s iconic wines: Sarah Ahmed picks her top 12

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Dirceu Vianna Junior MW, Christine Allen and Valentin Radosav tasted 70 wines, with 4 Outstanding and 56 Highly recommended.

Douro reds panel tasting scores

70 wines tasted

Exceptional 0

Outstanding 4

Highly recommended 56

Recommended 10

Commended 0

Fair 0

Poor 0

Entry criteria: producers and UK agents were invited to submit their latest-release Douro valley reds, including single-varietal or blended wines

It’s no secret that the Douro has been making excellent still red wines for years. But what is astonishing is the level of consistency that the region has managed to achieve in recent vintages – and this tasting, which featured wines from a wide range of those vintages, served to confirm this.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores from the Douro red wines panel tasting

‘What surprised me most was the consistency, fruit expression and use of oak,’ said Christine Allen. She felt the wines showed great finesse, fruit concentration and impeccable balance, pointing to very good vineyard management and winemaking practices. Valentin Radosav concurred, adding that the use of oak, in most cases, was very well judged. ‘If you have beautiful fruit, just let it express itself, and this is what seems to be happening,’ he said.

The level of uniformity and reliability can be expressed in numbers. 60 out of the 70 wines received an average rating of 90 points or above – a remarkably positive performance.

Douro is renowned for its hot, arid conditions, hence it would be reasonable to expect wines that are robust, powerful, and high in alcohol. However, in general, this selection displayed very good harmony and, on the few occasions alcohol exceeded 14%, the wines retained a sense of elegance and balancing freshness.

See all 70 wines from the Douro red wines panel tasting

‘They were not as big as I expected them to be, and even wines from hot vintages seemed balanced,’ said Allen. Radosav agreed: ‘There is an excellent level of quality across the board.’

The wide spectrum of vintages, from 2014 to 2021, included powerful wines from extremely dry and hot years like 2018, as well as more elegant wines from cooler vintages such as 2019. Wine lovers who enjoy more mature bottles should seek out wines from 2016; while those who prefer a more vibrant and fruit-forward wine should look for bottles from 2020. In general, the panellists agreed that high quality was a common theme, regardless of the harvest date, so readers can buy wines from recent vintages with confidence.

Another sign that should inspire confidence is the presence of Touriga Nacional on the label. With almost 5,000ha, it is only the third most-planted grape variety in the Douro valley, behind Touriga Franca and Tinta Roriz (according to the latest Instituto da Vinha e do Vinho data), yet it contributes to the quality of the region’s wines like no other variety.

Touriga Nacional revealed its personality and demonstrated that it can transform and elevate any blend with its captivating aromas and refined structure. It’s interesting to explore the single-variety wines, but there is no doubt that the best wines from the region are blends, especially from older vines, aged 40+ years.

What could be better? Allen suggested that wineries should not be afraid to release wines a little later. ‘If producers can afford to wait an extra year, many of the wines would certainly benefit,’ she affirmed. This is a sensible suggestion, since there are a few reputable producers whose wines would certainly have done even better in this tasting had they been given more time to develop in the bottle.

Generally speaking, the Douro reds offer excellent value for money, at a wide range of price points – especially when you consider the challenging, laborious growing conditions and low yields. The best wines are outstanding and can stand shoulder to shoulder with high-end wines from any other wine region in the world. So there can be only one message for consumers: there has never been a better time to explore the red wines of the Douro valley.

Douro red wines panel tasting scores

The following wines all scored 92 points or above

The judges

Dirceu Vianna Junior MW is a wine writer, consultant and educator. Moving to the UK from Brazil in 1989, he was a director at some of the UK’s most prominent distributors, becoming a Master of Wine in 2008. He is co-author of Conheça Vinhos (‘Understanding Wine’, Senac) an awarded book in Portuguese.

Christine Allen is marketing director for distributor Maisons Marques et Domaines. With years of experience in both on- and off-trade, she is particularly focused on Old World regions, notably Spain, Portugal and Burgundy, and is a DWWA judge for Spain.

Valentin Radosav is an advanced sommelier and a DWWA judge for Portugal. Formerly head sommelier at Michelin one-star Gymkhana in Mayfair, he is now learning and development manager for The Stafford hotel in London SW1.

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With a production capacity of 691,000 litres, the Quinta do Ataíde winery in the Vilariça Valley will be exclusively used for unfortified wine production.

The investment sum is triple the amount initially estimated back in 2018, and the winery is a key part of the company’s strategy to double premium unfortified wine sales by 2030.

‘Since the original plans were announced, we have decided to significantly increase the size of the facility as a result of our confidence in the growing demand for premium wines from the Douro,’ said Rob Symington, a director at Symington Family Estates.

He added that supply chain challenges brought about by Covid, and more recently by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, had led to an increase in the costs of building materials.

News of Symington Family Estates’ increased investment in unfortified wine production comes as the company, which also owns Port houses Graham’s, Dow’s and Warre’s among others, said it grappled with ‘unprecedented’ climatic conditions in the Douro this year, especially drought and heatwaves.

In its 2022 harvest report, the company said Portugal had been in severe drought since the winter, citing the country’s Met Office. Rainfall at Quinta do Bomfim in the heart of the Douro was 70% below the 30-year average, the group said.

After beginning to pick in the Douro Superior on 22 August, the group’s earliest start to harvest on record, temperatures fell back in early September. This allowed grapes to mature more gradually, and some rain followed – before the company decided to pause picking for 10 days.

‘Our viticulture and winery teams worked flat out through one of the most challenging Douro harvests and we have made some very promising wines, despite the astonishing conditions,’ said head winemaker Charles Symington in the harvest report. ‘Overall, our yields per vine were 20% below average, much better than we had anticipated in August.’

The group said that unfortified wine prospects had been buoyed by the resilience of native grape varieties grown at high altitude to severe conditions.

Ahead of anticipated results of a multi-year variety study, the company revealed that Donzelinho Tinto was one of its best-performing native red grape varieties in the Douro for climate adaptability and quality unfortified wine production.

Symington has started planting the grape variety at its Quinta do Ataíde estate, where in 2014 it created an experimental Variety Library comprised of 53 grape varieties.

The group said the year had shown the team how its native, low-yielding vines could still perform well with much less water and higher temperatures.

Rob Symington added, ‘I do not want to downplay the severity of these [climatic] challenges, but for the foreseeable future we expect we will be able to produce enough wine and of very good quality to meet our needs.’

Construction of the Quinta do Ataíde winery started in 2021, having been delayed due to Covid complications and is expected to be completed in time for the 2023 vintage. Symington said the winery’s capacity could increase, if required, to about 750,000 litres within five years.

Symington Family Estates reported an 11% and 7% increase in sales of Douro wines by value and volume respectively year-to-date, versus last year. Total unfortified wines sales reached approximately 250,000 nine-litre cases in 2021.

‘We aim to double our wine sales before the end of this decade, based on growing demand and excitement for Portuguese wines around the world and sales increases in Portugal,’ Symington said.

The company owns more than 1,000 hectares (ha) of Douro vineyards, but it is increasing its vineyard area to produce more unfortified wines.

Earlier this month, the group revealed it had acquired the Quinta Nova do Carrascal vineyard in the Vilariça Valley, which has 11.5ha under vine.

The new vineyard will be integrated into the Quinta do Ataíde estate, bringing the company’s total area in the Douro Superior to more than 330ha of organically-farmed vineyards.

‘With its unique flat landscape created by the divide between two geological plates, plentiful in local water supplies, we believe that this part of the Douro Superior, near Spain, has a fantastic potential for the production of high-quality unfortified wines,’ Symington said.

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Remarkably, given its purity and finesse, Legado (meaning legacy) hails from Quinta do Caêdo, Sogrape’s hottest Portuguese vineyard.

Hotter even than Herdade do Peso in southern Portugal’s Alentejo region, the Douro estate’s south-facing pre-phylloxera terraces – an 8ha natural amphitheatre – bask in the sun.

With impoverished ‘soil’ of decomposed schist mother rock, the old field blend vines planted here over a century ago produce less than half a kilogram of grapes per vine in this crucible of heat and dust. Sometimes they produce just a token bunch.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for six Legado wines and four Casa Ferreirinha wines

Following the acquisition of Quinta do Caêdo in 1990, these staggeringly low yields and the neglected state of the 24ha vineyard informed Sogrape’s decision to replant it.

Company president and CEO, Fernando da Cunha Guedes, winced at the memory of grubbing out pre-phylloxera terraces on the opposite bank of the Ribeira do Caêdo (the small Douro tributary that traverses the estate).

Luckily, when his father (also called Fernando) got wind of the replanting programme in 2005, it was not too late to save the south-facing terraces. Keen to preserve this slice of history, indeed bottle it, the Dijon-trained winemaker recognised the site’s potential to pay a unique tribute to his father, Sogrape’s co-founder, Fernando Van Zeller Guedes.

First release

A trial bottling in 2007 vindicated this decision, as did the opinion of top wine consultant Alberto Antonini who, teaming up with Sogrape’s head winemaker Luís Sottomayor, made the first 2008 release of Legado.

‘Tasting the berries and experiencing the range of flavours from all the different varieties was something I will never forget,’ the Tuscan wine-grower fondly reminisced.

Antonini’s role directing Sogrape’s precision viticulture programme between 2008 and 2012 was immensely important, according to Guedes. Removing lateral shoots and exposing the fruit zone very early in the season (after fruit set) has been key to helping berries adapt to sunlight – their skins thicken, protecting themselves from sunburn.

In stark contrast with Sogrape’s other flagship Douro red, Casa Ferreirinha Barca Velha, Legado is not only the product of a single vineyard, it is also made every year.

Guedes explained: ‘We want to show the style of the year and the character of the grapes from that terroir, changing nothing.’

‘The work is very small; we harvest at the right moment [typically over a fortnight in two or three phases, according to elevation and exposure] and let it age in oak,’ added Sottomayor, a master of understatement.

It is a Sogrape trait. Guedes revealed it was difficult to persuade his father – who he described as a stubborn and unpretentious man – to append his signature to the Legado label. Goodness knows what he thought of the heavyweight bottle. It signals blockbuster, yet Legado has uncommon finesse for a wine from such a sun-drenched Douro site.

With one exception (2009, a hot, dry year), the fruit purity and definition is excellent, as is the freshness. Legado’s ultra-fine tannins shone across the flight. Even in 2009, when the punishing August heat accelerated ripening, ‘the tannins were perfect, with no green’, beamed Sottomayor.

Later vintages (which were aged in 1,200-litre French oak barrels, as opposed to 225-litre barriques prior to 2015) were particularly refined, enhancing broach-ability without sacrificing ageability.

See tasting notes and scores for six Legado wines and four Casa Ferreirinha wines:

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Last chance: You can still buy tickets to watch this Symington Family Vineyards virtual masterclass and taste the wines, via the Decanter at Home series – book here

When the Symington family launched its 2019 Ports earlier this year, it was the fifth generation who came to the fore. Sitting at the family’s three main quintas in the Douro – Vesúvio, Malvedos and Bomfim – Rob, Harry, Vicky, Charlotte and Anthony Symington confidently presented their fourth successful harvest in a row.

Scroll down to see the Symington Family Estates masterclass tasting notes and scores

A huge responsibility rests on the shoulders of the Symington millennials and generation Zs who are now joining the firm.

The family can date its presence in Portugal back to the late 19th century and has built up a holding that includes four major Port houses (Cockburn, Dow, Graham and Warre) as well as over 1,000ha of vineyard in the beautiful but challenging Douro Valley.

In 2017 it made its first foray outside the Douro, buying Quinta da Fonte Souto estate on the equally beautiful but much less precipitous slopes of the Alto Alentejo.

There are currently 10 family members working full-time in the company including Anthony Symington who is responsible for all of the family’s Port brands in the UK. Born in 1988, he takes the place of his father Dominic who retired earlier this year. Every member of the family has to earn a place in the firm having done something else first.

A family affair

In this masterclass Anthony and I talked about the importance of family in the Douro both in terms of heritage and continuity and also innovation. The line-up of wines reflects this, with Ports that have been set aside for 20, 30 and 40 years joined by pioneering (unfortified) wines from the Douro and Alentejo.

In this context we discussed the longevity of Quinta do Vesúvio’s fine Douro red, but given that the first wine was only launched in 2007, we could only speculate about the future. Vesúvio already has a track record for its fine vintage Ports and is building up a profile for unfortified Douro wines under the Quinta do Vesúvio and Pombal do Vesúvio labels.

For Vinha do Fonte Souto, 2017 is the first harvest from this recently acquired estate near Portalegre on the western slopes of the Serra de São Mamede. These are two names you are certain to hear much more of in future.

Tawny Ports

The masterclass was also a rare opportunity to taste a ladder of tawny Ports, starting two-thirds of the way up with Graham’s 20-Year-Old. The comparison is always fascinating, especially when the wines come from one house with a distinctive house style.

Graham’s is always the sweetest and most opulent of the traditional Symington houses, with Dow the driest and Warre somewhere in the middle (see below). As tawnies age in wood (in Graham’s case in smaller lodge pipes), the wines gain in sweetness and complexity due to slow, controlled oxidation and evaporation in relatively humid conditions in Vila Nova de Gaia.

The wines set aside for ageing have to be cared for and looked after with regular racking to keep casks topped up and to separate the wine from the lees. The clarity of the 40-Year-Old Tawny, despite its evident richness and depth, is testament to at least three generations of Symingtons and their employees who have nurtured and monitored the wines that make up the blend.

By contrast the Single Harvest 1994 Tawny named ‘the apprentice’, has a family story involving Peter and his son Charles Symington who together have been responsible for the winemaking for over 40 years.

Vintage Ports

The deeper hues of the two vintage Ports in the line-up mark them out from the tawnies. Quinta do Vesúvio 2003 is a relative youngster from a huge estate bought by the Symingtons from the Ferreira family in 1989. This remote property in the Douro Superior has multiple terroirs that permit a vintage Port to be made nearly every year.

Warre’s 1980 shows how a wine from a good ‘declared’ year ages slowly and steadily in bottle and how a wine like this can retain its primary fruit even after 41 years. Warre’s Quinta da Cavadinha has something to do with it. Located towards the top of the Pinhão Valley it produces wines with definition and verve, particularly in warmer years such as 2009 and 2017.

We discussed the need to decant these wines (something that is not nearly as tricky or involved as many people think) and then raised a glass to Anthony’s grandfather Michael who was responsible for making a trio of great wines in 1980. As you will find out if you tune in to the masterclass and the interview that followed, producing wines with this calibre is very much a family commitment for the Symingtons.

See the Symington Family Estates masterclass tasting notes and scores

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A vineyard and residential property in Portugal’s highly prized Douro valley is on the market priced at £1.2m (€1.4m).

With stunning views over the Douro Valley and of the estate’s own vineyards, the Vila Marim property spans 10.5 hectares (26 acres) of which 9.25 is under vine.

The vineyards’ south-facing slopes are planted with classic Portuguese varieties Tinta Roriz, Tinta Barroca, Touriga Francesa, Touriga Nacional and Malvaviafina, perfect for the production of Port or still red wines.

The house itself dates back to 1758, and the property for sale comprises part of the original house, split across two floors and offering two bedrooms and two bathrooms, plus panoramic views of the vineyards and valley.

According to the estate agent the basement of the property has space for 50 wine barrels – so could potentially be used for winemaking – and on the estate there are various outbuildings and a chapel dedicated to Saint Lawrence.

The area

The Douro vineyard and property is being sold by Christie’s International Real Estate. It is located in the Vila Marim countryside, one hour from Porto, and in the heart of one of Portugal’s most famous wine-producing regions.

‘Vineyards like the one we are listing here are often bought by foreign clients for the purpose of private enjoyment or to monetise investment in the tourism sector in a region that has national and international demand all year round,’ Christie’s told Decanter.

There are lots of options when it comes to buying a vineyard, as discussed in Decanter‘s recent How to buy a vineyard guide. 

Key questions for buyers include whether they intend to run a commercial operation or are content for the vineyard to ‘wash its face’ financially; in other words, not necessarily needing to make a profit but equally wanting to avoid heavy losses.

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‘I’m very ambitious with these red wines from the Douro,’ says Christian Seely, managing director of Quinta do Noval. ‘I believe that high quality reds and whites can give a new lease of life to the Douro and deliver to drinkers some really thrilling wines.’

Speaking at a tasting of the latest vintages of the quinta’s still wines, it’s clear that Seely has a vision for both the winery and the future of this region of Portugal – best known for its fortified wines – in the face of climate change and global warming.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for new release Quinta do Noval wines

Established in 1715, Quinta do Noval is famous for its vintage Ports – particularly its 1.6ha of ungrafted vines used to produce icon wine Nacional. It began making still wines in 2004.

Seely took charge of the estate when it was bought by AXA Millésimes in 1993. Since then much of the vineyard has been replanted, first under the supervision of technical director António Agrellos and since his retirement in 2017, under his nephew Carlos Agrellos.

In 2019 Quinta do Noval purchased the neighbouring Quinta do Passadouro estate, which has two main vineyard parcels in the Pinhão Valley and the Roncão Valley, totalling 36ha. The acquisition increased Noval’s total vineyard holdings in the Douro to 181ha.

Grape varieties

As well as plantings of traditional Douro varieties Touriga Franca, Tinta Cão and Tinta Roriz, Noval has focused on increasing its number of Touriga Nacional vines. Indeed Noval’s first single-varietal still wine was made by accident from overlooked barrels of Touriga Nacional in 2004.

‘Touriga Nacional has naturally low yields. I think of it as a delicate, floral, aromatic varietal and you have to vinify it accordingly to achieve that,’ says Seely. ‘It’s an important element in our vintage Ports. It seems to respond well to intense heat – you can make very interesting wines in hot years.’

The winery has also introduced French grapes to its vineyards. Alongside Touriga Nacional, its top range of still wines includes a Syrah and Petit Verdot. ‘We planted Syrah in 2000, it adapts very well to the Douro,’ notes Seely, who had access to cuttings – and considerable expertise – of these French varieties from AXA Millésimes stablemate Château Pichon Baron in Bordeaux and former stablemate Domaine Mas Belles Eaux in the Languedoc.

The tasting

Alongside these single varietal wines Noval makes its flagship Reserva. It also produces two other labels – Maria Mansa and Cedro do Noval, with a red and white of each – bringing its total range of Douro table wines to eight.

The new release tasting began with Cedro do Noval Branco 2020, the label named after the large cedar tree that grows on the terrace of the quinta. It’s a well-priced blend of 65% Viosinho and 35% Gouveio; the white varieties planted in a 6ha vineyard that used to be an olive grove. ‘If you want to make white wines in the Douro you have to plant your own vines,’ notes Seely.

‘I take white wines from the Douro very seriously,’ he continues. ‘The quality potential of these whites is almost limitless. Part of the thrill of these wines is their personality – they have individuality.’

That’s true of Cedro do Noval Tinto, a characterful red blend that varies from vintage to vintage. The 2017, from a hot, dry year comprised 55% Touriga Nacional, 25% Syrah, 15% Touriga Francesca and 5% Tinta Cão. While 2018, from a more temperate vintage, included less Touriga Nacional (50%) and more Touriga Francesca (20%).

The inclusion of Syrah here is indicative of the French sensibility that runs through the rest of Noval’s red wines, which are all aged in French oak.

‘Red wine is now a significant proportion of our production at Noval,’ explains Seely. ‘We don’t decide at the start of the year which grapes will be which. From the beginning of August we taste and make decisions about Port or red wine.’

Built to last

The quinta’s flagship Reserva is also a blend. While the 2017 combines 55% Touriga Nacional and 20% Touriga Francesca, the 2018 vintage includes 15% of old field-blend vines. Attention to detail is shown in fine-tuning of the oak regime: 12 months in 225-litre French oak, with 35% new for the 2017 and 50% new for the 2018.

Seely is confident that these Reservas have considerable ageing potential for the future. ‘Typically to show you have a great terroir, you need to prove the wines can age. But the reality of the market is that people are buying these wines young,’ he says.

‘I believe the Reserva 2017 and 2018 have maybe 10, 15, 20 years of ageing ahead of them,’ he adds. ‘Only since 2012 have we been making wines that will really age. We don’t have a back library of vintages to show the ageing potential yet – but we will.’

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Quinta do Noval said it had no hesitation in declaring the 2019 vintage of its highly prized Nacional Port. 

‘It was not a difficult decision to declare the Quinta do Noval 2019 Nacional, which from our very first tastings after the harvest revealed a grandeur and depth worthy of the Nacional name,’ said the group’s MD, Christian Seely. 

Produced from a small parcel of ungrafted vines at the heart of the Noval vineyard, only 200 to 250 cases of Nacional are generally made in any declared vintage. 

Quinta do Noval has also this week declared its namesake 2019 vintage Port and Quinta do Passadouro 2019 – the first vintage produced from the estate acquired by the group in that same year. 

‘I am thrilled by the quality of our first vintage from Passadouro, which shows great personality and clear terroir distinction, which I feel fully justifies our decision to acquire this vineyard,’ said Seely. 

Of the Quinta do Noval 2019, the group said the wine was drawn from 13 different vineyard parcels across its 145-hectare estate. The group has made 2,780 cases, representing around 14% of total production.

It remains to be seen how many Port houses will follow Noval’s lead with the 2019 vintage. Declarations traditionally take place on or around 23 April – St George’s day in England – and recent years have seen a lot of activity thanks to the well-regarded 2016, 2017 and 2018 vintages.

Symington Family Estates said last week that it was declaring 2019 vintage Ports from six different quintas, or estates.

Two of these will be released en primeur, the group said, naming them as Quinta do Vesúvio and Dow’s Quinta da Senhora da Ribeira. 

The other four 2019 vintage Ports will be aged in Symington cellars prior to release. They are:

• Graham’s Quinta dos Malvedos;
• Dow’s Quinta do Bomfim;
• Warre’s Quinta da Cavadinha;
• Cockburn’s Quinta dos Canais.  

Charles Symington, fourth-generation head winemaker, said, ‘When reviewing the top wines from 2019, we felt that the best expression of our grape varieties came from our six principal quintas.

‘These estate wines are always the starting point from which we judge the year’s vintage Port potential and, from there, decide what to bottle. 

‘In 2019, the various plots of vineyards within each of these estates delivered small volumes of wine with fantastic depth and complexity.’

He added, ‘We believe these wines could not have been enhanced by blending across each of our port houses’ top quintas to produce a ‘classic’ vintage Port. Instead, we decided to blend the best performing components within each of our estates and bottle six Quinta Vintage Ports.’

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Vintage Port may be king, but colheita Ports [single-vintage aged tawnies] are popular by election,’ says Dirk Niepoort who, by a long chalk, holds the world record for the most expensive Port sold at auction.

In 2019, a bespoke Lalique decanter of Niepoort 1863 fetched more than £100,000 at a Sotheby’s sale in Hong Kong.

Scroll down for Sarah Ahmed’s 18 favourite Tawny Ports

With luxury packaging and positioning, the rise of rare aged colheitas this last decade has added considerable lustre to the tawny Port category – and broadened the scope for anniversary gifting beyond vintage Port. During this period, demand for non-vintage tawnies has surged too.

Thankfully, with an extensive range of styles (and small-format bottlings) available, you need not be as rich as Croesus to enjoy benchmark tawny Port and will find it a versatile companion. An excellent aperitif or digestif, it also excels with cheese and classic Christmas puddings or chocolate, nut and caramel-based desserts.

Maturing tawny Port in seasoned small casks or vats differentiates it from ruby Ports (including vintage Port), which mature in the bottle. Ready to drink on release and without decanting, tawny Port is best served (and stored) lightly chilled, between 12°C-16°C.

Russet-coloured basic tawnies are wood-aged for about three years, and the more concentrated tawny reserve Ports for about seven. These styles typically retain primary plum and berry flavours, and once opened they can keep for a week or two.

‘You need to have enormous quality and structure to age in barrels,’ says Charles Symington (Graham’s), and – with prolonged wood maturation – higher-tier tawny Ports are a significant step up. They account for the alluring hue behind the name and combination of moreish approachability with tertiary complexity – citrus peel, dried fruit, caramel and ethereal, nutty, spicy wood notes. Having already undergone lengthy (controlled) oxidation, colheitas and tawny Ports ‘with an indication of age’ can last up to three months once broached.

Colheitas (sometimes labelled Single Harvest) must spend at least seven years in wood. Often aged for much longer, they can be labelled Very Old after 40 years in cask.

Tawny Ports with ‘an indication of age’ must reflect organoleptic qualities which correspond to the indicated age (10, 20, 30 or 40 years old). With no average age requirement, producers have considerable latitude when blending – especially those with extensive back-catalogues. A tiny component from precious barrels of inter-generational Ports – 80- or perhaps 100-year-old – brings depth, intensity and woody timbre. They sometimes also add volatile acidity: ‘Useful lift and zip,’ according to Ana Rosas, Ramos Pinto’s master blender.

This blending latitude explains the breadth of style within each bracket of tawny Ports with ‘an indication of age’ – from elegant to luscious, delicate to vigorous. For Kopke’s Port winemaker, Carlos Alves, the size and type of wood also ‘really gives profile to the house’.

Sarah Ahmed picks her favourite Tawny Ports

See also

Port 2018: Vintage guide and what to buy

Rare Museum Wines from Portuguese Icons

The fortified wine crossword

The buses in a West Yorkshire town used to be referred to as ‘grapes’: they were red, you waited for ages and then they came along in a bunch. There is something of the same to be said about Port vintages these days, with the last four years declared in a row.

Scroll down to see Richard Mayson’s top Vintage Port 2018 tasting notes and scores

It used to be a rule of thumb that declared vintages would number about three a decade; 1960, 1963, and 1966 being a case in point. Then there could be long gaps like that between 1985 and 1991/2.

But in recent years Port drinkers have been faced with an embarras de richesse with declarations taking place in 2015, 2016 and 2017 followed by yet another successful year in 2018.

Taylor’s who declared outright in 2016 and 2017, declared again in 2018; the first time in history that they have made three classic vintage declarations in a row.

Adrian Bridge, managing director of the Fladgate Partnership justifies this, saying: ‘Our principle is that we declare a Classic Vintage when the quality is there. This is dictated by the year, not by any other consideration. In 2018, overall conditions were excellent but in the Douro Superior they were exceptional’.

Luís Sottomayor, responsible for Ferreira, Offley and Sandeman is even more fulsome. ‘2018 is one of the best, not the best vintage I have witnessed. The special conditions experienced during the 2018 harvest came together to produce wines that combine extraordinary elegance with an unusual structure…’

Although 2018 has proved to be a good harvest across the board, not everyone is quite so effusive. Speaking for Cockburn, Dow, Graham and Warre, Harry Symington comments that they had ‘small quantities of excellent wine, but this was not consistent throughout the region, so we decided against a full declaration’.

Cockburn’s had already declared an unprecedented three years in a row with 2015, 2016 and 2017 and all the Symington Port houses declared Single Quinta Vintage Ports (SQVPs) in 2018.

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Growing conditions

From the grower’s point of view 2018 was certainly a roller coaster of a year. Ana Rosas of Ramos Pinto says: ‘It was one of the most challenging years for viticulture, however the wines produced are very pure with exceptional fruit.’

Dirk Niepoort has opted not to declare any 2018 adding: ‘Since we picked the grapes quite early, as usual, in 2018, we think that the 2018s don’t have the concentration, richness – and particularly not the complexity – for us to declare. It seems that 2018 might be “great” when picked late…’

The year was preceded by 22 months of drought, interrupted by a wet spring then followed by a summer heat wave, when temperatures rose to 45℃ in parts of the Douro Superior.

It was the groundwater that saved the year and the late-ripening Touriga Franca grape gave the wines acidity, lending them freshness and definition.

It is interesting to observe how many vintage Ports are now made up from a fairly precise varietal mix rather than from the interplanted field blend of old vines that has historically been at the core of the finest wines. There is no rule on when a vine becomes ‘old’ but it is worth remembering that some of the early varietal vineyards in the Douro are now between 30 and 40 years of age.

The vintage Port market

Due to the pandemic, the market for vintage Port has been rather skewed this year. A few wines were offered en primeur in the early summer of 2020, including Quinta do Noval, Quinta do Vesúvio and Dow’s Senhora da Ribeira.

The other wines from the Symingtons have been kept back for later release. Taylor’s will only be released for sale early in 2021. Opening prices for the top wines were around £280/six bottles in bond but, as this is not a fully declared year, expect some well-priced SQVPs for drinking over the medium- to long-term.

The wines below were tasted over the summer of 2020. They form an impressive line-up, the best characterised by ripeness, freshness and thereby wonderful balance. One or two show the heat of the vintage.

I will give the last word on 2018 to Adrian Bridge: ‘We have to follow the wine, not the economy… We want to make these wines when they come along and we don’t know when the next one is coming along.’ Just like those buses…

Port 2018: top recommendations

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Symington Family Estates, owner of Warre’s, Dow’s and Graham’s, announced the death of James Symington this week.

He was part of the third generation of the Symington family to make Port and was a leading figure in Portugal’s famous Douro Valley for more than 40 years, the family-owned group said in a tribute.

From overseeing the making of legendary vintages like 1966 and 1970 to expanding the reach of Port overseas – especially in the US – James Symington is credited with helping the region recover from a precarious financial position following the Second World War.

Born in 1934, Symington moved to Canada with his mother and siblings for two years during World War Two, but the family returned to Portugal in 1943.

Having been educated in Lisbon and at Ampleforth school in Yorkshire, England, Symington was unable to take up a place at the University of Oxford in 1952 due to ‘financial limitations’ amid a difficult era for Port producers.

He joined the British Army in 1954 and served as second lieutenant in the King’s African Rifles in Kenya, where he became fluent in Swahili.

However, in 1960, he married his wife, Penny, and joined the family firm, initially working as a taster and blender.

He would be responsible for Dow’s and Warre’s 1966 and 1970, two top Port vintages of the 20^th century, as well as the lauded 1970 vintage Port at Graham’s, the historic producer house acquired by the Symington family that year.

After 1973, he switched to the commercial side of the business and to finding new markets, a move that notably led to the creation of distribution firm Premium Port Wines in San Francisco, US, in 1985.

‘James, together with his cousins Michael and Ian, formed a strong partnership that steered the family business through several turbulent decades, when many of the historic family Port companies were sold or simply closed,’ Symington Family Estates said.

In 1987, Symington and his wife, Penny, bought the semi-abandoned Quinta do Vila Velha and renovated it into a 145-hectare (ha) property with 55ha of vineyards, the group said.

It added that James Symington’s friendship with other leading wine world figures, such as Miguel Torres, Piero Antinori and Robert Drouhin, was instrumental the firm becoming a founding member of Premium Familiae Vini group of prestigious, family-owned wine producers in 1992.

‘James and Penny had a son, Rupert, and two daughters, Clare and Miranda, and six grandchildren,’ said the group.

Rupert is currently CEO of Symington Family Estates, while Rupert’s son, Hugh, has been working at Premium Port Wines since 2018. ‘Clare also works in the family business and is based in the UK,’ the group said.

See also: 

The Decanter interview: Paul Symington (2020)

Top Ports that are drinking well today (2019)

“It’s an open secret that the Douro Valley is very capable of producing high-quality reds from its characterful indigenous grapes…. Douro wines of quality have grown up fast in sophistication, number and diversity,” says Sarah Ahmed, Regional Chair for Portugal at the Decanter World Wine Awards.

At DWWA 2019 this statement rang true as Ahmed’s panel awarded not one, but two coveted Best in Show medals to red wines from the Douro. To give this perspective, of the more than 16,500 wines tasted, only 50 (0.3%) received this esteemed award.

As we look forward to DWWA 2020 results – available on Decanter.com this 22 September – we look back at 2019 results with a spotlight on Douro and the quality-driven, 90+ point red wines that impressed at last year’s competition.

Premium read – The Douro: An evolution plus 20 top wines worth seeking out

Douro: 90+ point reds from DWWA 2019

For stockists and additional wine details, select the wine of interest below

Quinta dos Castelares, Superior, Superiore, Douro, Portugal 2016

97 points, Best in Show: Value

50% Touriga Nacional, 25% Touriga Franca, 25% Tinta Roriz

Despite turning our searchlight on a number of Platinum contenders, only one wine in our Value category made it through to Best In Show this year – but it’s a cracker. This Douro red is dark and sweet-scented, packed with all the evocative wild-flower and plant allusions (cistus, laurel, sloe, juniper) which typify its regional origins. Once in the mouth, this is poised, ample, fresh, textured and full, its dark berry fruits lifted by those perfumes of remoteness which make Douro wines so distinctive. Its value is so impressive, indeed, that it could compete squarely with wines several price brackets above it. Drink 2019-2025

João Brito e Cunha, Quinta de S. José Reserva, Douro, Portugal 2016

97 points, Best in Show

60% Vinha Velha, 40% Touriga Nacional

A second Douro wine in our Best in Show category, and one which is totally different in style to the first. This saturated black-purple wine (hugely youthful still) is almost shockingly aromatic: a wind-lifted blast of black forest fruits which seems to come tearing directly off the terraces, freshened further by herbal essences and glittering with a sweetness which owes very little to oak or winery cossetting and everything to the ripening cycle of an extraordinary site. All the intensity of its old-vine fruits and complex spectrum of grape varieties is evident in the glass in this indubitably fine and deeply Portuguese wine. Drink 2019-2030

Quinta do Couquinho, Colheita, Douro, Portugal 2016

95 points, Gold

50% Touriga Nacional, 45% Touriga Franca, 5% Sousão

Ripe, dense aromas including violets, tea leaf, bergamot, peppercorns and fresh black fruit overlay minty blueberry touches. Graphite, mineral touches on clean palate, savoury notes to finish.

Adão António Aguiar, Harvest Reserve, Superiore, Douro, Portugal 2016

93 points, Silver

50% Touriga Nacional, 45% Touriga Fêmea, 5% Sousão

White pepper, fresh thyme and violets combine on the nose with a touch of blackberry. Delicate palate, floral minerality, refreshing, with fine mouth-coating tannins.

Adega Vila Real, Reserva, Douro, Portugal 2016

90 points, Silver

30% Touriga Nacional, 30% Tinta Barroca, 30% Touriga Franca

Intense blackcurrant fruit concentration, with raisin and date aromas. Dense palate has coffee, chocolate, nutty notes and a spicy round finish.

Carm, Touriga Nacional-Tinta Roriz-Touriga Franz, Douro, Portugal 2016

93 points, Silver

40% Touriga Nacional, 30% Touriga Franca, 30% Tinta Roriz

Intense, elegant rich fruit nose with a floral mineral covering. High quality fruit on muscular palate, powerful tannins covering lovely red fruits.

Casa Ferreirinha, Quinta da Leda, Douro, Portugal 2015

90 points, Silver

50% Touriga Franca, 20% Touriga Nacional, 15% Tinta Cao

A measured and complex nose, ripe black fruit, violets and spice. Concentrated, juicy tannins, oaky touches, purple fruit freshness.

Casa Ferreirinha, Vinha Grande, Douro, Portugal 2016

90 points, Silver

40% Touriga Franca, 25% Touriga Nacional, 25% Tinta Roriz

Satisfying rich, ripe nose, Earl Grey, cassis, herbal twist. Smooth plummy palate, juicy blackberry fruit, spicy hints, long tannic finish.

Casa Santos Lima, Anciano Reserva, Douro, Portugal 2016

91 points, Silver

35% Tinta Barroca, 30% Sousão, 25% Tinta Cao

Lovely ripe blue fruit aromas, peppery overtones. Supple and subtle oak covers mellow, juicy fruit. Classy, polished wine with spicy notes.

Dona Matilde, Douro, Portugal 2016

91 points, Silver

40% Touriga Nacional, 40% Touriga Franca, 20% Tinta Amarela

Spicy red fruit, liquorice aromas, cocoa, cigar box, spicy tobacco hints. Lovely juicy profile, fine cedary tannins, persistent chocolatey finish.

Jean-Hugues Gros Wine, Little Odisseia, Douro, Portugal 2016

92 points, Silver

40% Touriga Franca, 30% Tinta Roriz, 20% Touriga Nacional

Attractive herbal blue fruit aromas, bergamot, Earl grey, woody overtones. Persistent juicy black and red fruit, quality oak, evident tannins on finish.

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Mário Cardoso, Quinta da Sequeira Reserva, Douro, Portugal 2015

90 points, Silver

40% Touriga Nacional, 35% Touriga Franca, 25% Tinta Roriz

Dark, brooding purple fruit nose, bergamot, mulberry, fine spices, graphite. Dense, creamy palate, blue fruit, medicinal notes, dry oaky tannins.

Quinta da Côrte, Douro, Portugal 2015

90 points, Silver

50% Touriga Nacional, 50% Touriga Franca

Very complex nose, herbal notes with bergamot, graphite and peppery hints. Full-bodied super spicy palate, evident tannins, freshness on finish.

Quinta da Gaivosa, Douro, Portugal 2015

90 points, Silver

20% Touriga Franca, 20% Touriga Nacional, 20% Tinto Cão

Wonderful fresh nose, potent ripe fruity notes. Juicy palate, dense plummy notes, roasted berries, dominant oak, serious earthy finish.

Quinta de Ventozelo, Touriga Nacional, Douro, Portugal 2016

92 points, Silver

100% Touriga Nacional

Attractive red fruit aromas, Earl Grey, vanilla and peppery notes showing through. Rounded mouthfeel and violet hints on the textured oaky palate.

Quinta Dona Mafalda, A.B., Douro, Portugal 2017

93 points, Silver

100% Alicante Bouschet

A lovely focused dark-fruited nose with spices coming through. Fine, firm tannins, oaky touches and alluring lick of juicy fruit.

Quinta dos Castelares, Douro, Portugal 2017

90 points, Silver

50% Touriga Nacional, 25% Touriga Franca, 25% Tinta Roriz

Attractive dark fruit nose violets, blueberry and chocolate notes, with a hint of spice. Fresh fruity palate, grippy tannins, pleasantly structured finish.

Rui Roboredo Madeira, Castello D’Alba Vinhas Velhas, Douro, Portugal 2017

90 points, Silver

70% Touriga Nacional, 20% Touriga Franca, 10% Tinta Roriz

Excellent ripe blue fruit aromas, very polished with an earthy edge. Spicy, herbal palate, vanilla oak, complex bergamot savoury finish.

Secret Spot Wines, Lacrau Old Vines, Douro, Portugal 2015

93 points, Silver

100% Field Blend

Earth, liquorice and spice on the nose, touch of cedar, clove, blueberry. Lovely elegance to palate, good fruity freshness to the finish.

Symington Family Estates, Quinta do Ataíde, Douro, Portugal 2016

91 points, Silver

30% Touriga Nacional, 30% Tinta Barroca, 40% Touriga Franca

Fresh blackcurrant leaf nose, floral bergamot,and red currant underneath. Elegantly structured palate, silky eucalyptus, cherry notes, milk chocolate tannins, spicy finish.

Symington Family Estates, Quinta do Vesuvio, Douro, Portugal 2016

91 points, Silver

70% Touriga Nacional, 30% Touriga Franca

Impressive, delicate aromas, violets, orange blossom, bergamot, cocoa and tobacco lead into vanilla-oak palate, richly complex, floral notes, liquorice, spicy finish.

Vini Lourenço, Pai Horacio Grande Reserva, Douro, Portugal 2015

90 points, Silver

35% Tinta Roriz, 45% Sousão, 20% Touriga Nacional

Very elegant spicy black fruit, potent, intense and generous oak. Rich fruit concentration on juicy palate, lively herbal finish.

Founded in 1999 by Symington Family Estates (SFE) and Bruno Prats, former owner of Bordeaux’s Château Cos d’Estournel, Prats & Symington is the partnership through which the prestigious Port wine dynasty successfully forged a new path.

Fresh to making unfortified Douro DOC wine, Paul Symington, then joint-managing director, made no bones about the value of Prats’ ‘profound knowledge of turning outstanding fruit into one of the world’s greatest wines’. Meanwhile Prats was drawn by ‘the Symingtons’ priceless knowledge of the Douro’.

The goal? Proving that the Douro could produce top red wines to stand alongside the family’s leading Ports, including Graham’s, Dow, Warre’s and Quinta do Vesuvio.

French polish

Following a year of intensive trials, the partners’ (and Symington’s) first Douro DOC wine emerged in 2000. ‘D’Ouro’ means ‘golden’ in Portuguese, so they named it Chryseia, after the Greek for golden. Conceived in ‘the same spirit as a small Bordeaux château’, according to Prats, production is small and decidedly upmarket, hence the introduction of a second wine in 2002, when Chryseia was not made.

Post-Scriptum de Chryseia (P.S.) has been made every year since, alongside Chryseia, save for 2010, which was another light year, when no ‘Grand Vin’ (as Prats describes the top wine) was released.

Becoming one of its most sought-after wines, Chryseia has undoubtedly added lustre to the Douro region, which continues to attract distinguished Bordelais. They include Hubert de Boüard of Château Angélus and Philippe Nunes (at Poças) and ex-Pétrus man, Jean-Claude Berrouet (at Quinta da Boavista).

Strikingly, Prats preferred to invest, not consult because, he tells me: ‘I believe you work better when your own money is in risk.’ The investment has been considerable, with the acquisition of dedicated estates and construction of a bespoke winery, designed to produce wines of great finesse as opposed to Port wine, with its traditional focus on power and extract.

With finesse in mind, the wines focus on two leading varieties, Touriga Nacional and Touriga Franca, while vinification closely follows the Bordeaux method, with rigorous berry sorting, 100% de-stemming, temperature-controlled ferments in closed stainless-steel tanks (not open lagares) and long but gentle extractions. ‘What’s magic with Douro wine is the fruit,’ says Prats.

Unlike Cabernet Sauvignon, neither Touriga Nacional nor Touriga Franca accepts a high level of oak, so 400-litre French oak barrels are used, not Bordeaux’s 225-litre barriques. The lightness of touch is particularly evident in the consistently elegant, mid-weight P.S., which sees no new oak and has less skin maceration.

As for Chryseia, since introducing a little more extraction and press wine as confidence in its ageing potential grew, the Grand Vin spends around twice as long in oak (16 months) compared with early vintages which, according to Prats, ‘were made to be very seductive’ and seemed glossier, more international in style.

Sense of place

The biggest investment of all has been in the vineyards, with a migration from Quinta do Vesuvio and (Dow’s) Quinta do Bomfim in favour of Quinta da Perdiz in the Torto Valley (acquired in 2004) and, Chryseia’s backbone, Quinta de Roriz (mainly north-facing, acquired in 2009). The latter neighbours Quinta da Vila Velha (mainly west-facing), which is a minor but constant contributor to the blend.

The focus on these Cima Corgo vineyards, especially Roriz, with its mineral-rich soils that were once mined for tin, has amplified Chryseia’s sense of place. They give a powerful, rugged even, mineral-driven (dusty schistous) dry extract, sometimes saltiness.

Charles Symington, SFE’s head winemaker, says: ‘Roriz’s predominantly north-facing aspect (as opposed to Perdiz’s hotter west and south-west aspects) also favours superb freshness.’ Perdiz also gives wines ‘that have rich fruit and are intensely aromatic’; it is the primary source of P.S., though Charles believes Perdiz will make a greater contribution to Chryseia as new plantings mature.

2017: a classic vintage

Vintage expression plays a role too. Prats has described the formidable 2011 vintage – a classic Vintage Port year – as ‘more Douro style’ and the elegant 2012 vintage as ‘more Bordeaux in style’. Like 2011, the latest 2017 releases come from a classic Vintage Port year, albeit a rather different year.

Whilst 2011 has been described as a ‘stars aligned year’, 2017 was the second-driest year in the Douro and easily the hottest year of the last four decades. Thanks to an early start to the growing season, freshness was nonetheless well preserved in the earliest vintage on record.

This, coupled with 2017’s powerful, textural tannins, makes for an emphatically well-structured Chryseia. It is more backward than 2011 at the same stage.

Though similarly focused on the Tourigas (with a splash of Tinta Amarela), the Prats & Symington wines made for an interesting comparison with SFE’s Douro wines from Quinta do Vesuvio, one of Chryseia’s original sources.

Famous for its Port, this easternmost, north-facing Douro Superior estate’s wines (which made their debut in 2007) are darker and broader. From Vesuvio’s lower slopes, second wine Pombal do Vesuvio is sturdy, where P.S. is elegant. With Touriga Nacional from its higher reaches and Touriga Franca from lower slopes, top wine Quinta do Vesuvio 2017 is already accessible and expressive, contrasting with Chryseia’s gravitas and restraint.

The wines

Full tasting notes and scores of the 2017 wines by Sarah Ahmed – plus older vintages of Chryseia tasted and rated by Sarah Ahmed, Tom Cannavan (2008), Margaret Rand (2011) and Steven Spurrier (2015).

Everyone is visiting Portugal. The draw? Timeworn charm, tradition and authenticity – qualities that extend to the country’s wines. Focusing on iconic producers, rare museum releases and stellar vintages, this masterclass showcased Portugal’s classic wine regions, winemaking traditions and history through 10 charismatic ‘works of time’.

During the négociant era, bulk wine for colonies was the principal focus, however the Costa brothers of Caves São João famously bottled the cream of the Dão crop under the Porta dos Cavaleiro brand, Reserva Seleccionada being the finest. Launched in 1963, skilful sourcing, blending and ageing (in cement, then bottle), highlighted elegance and bouquet, setting the template for this mountainous, granitic region’s gastronomic, long-lived wines.

Retaining a foot in the négociant camp, Buçaco Reservado is made from Buçaco’s and growers’ grapes in Buçaco Palace Hotel’s cellars. Conceived in 1917 as ‘a cathedral of wine’, owner Alexandre Almeida wanted to celebrate the neighbouring source regions: Dão and Bairrada. Almost exclusive to the hotel (which lists vintages back to the 1940s), this ultimate ‘house wine’ – a Vinho de Mesa, by reason of inter-regionality – has been served to visiting heads of state.

Celebrating 40 vintages this year, Luís Pato represented the modern age of boutique, estate wines from top vineyards or vineyard parcels, such as Vinha Barrosa. Pato pioneered green harvesting, de-stemming and French oak in Bairrada to ‘polish’ Baga’s notorious tannins. From his oldest vineyard, the 2009 vintage is, for Pato, ‘underrated, a reference’.

Released in exceptional vintages and after significant bottle-ageing, flagship reds Herdade do Mouchão, Mouchão Tonel No 3-4 2013 and Quinta do Mouro, Rótulo Dourado 2007 from Alentejo represented the traditional and modern face of sunny southern Portugal.

Herdade do Mouchão introduced Alentejo to its most structured variety, Alicante Bouschet and, for over a century, it has been foot-trodden and whole-bunch fermented in lagares, then aged in old 5,000-litre Portuguese oak barrels (tonels). Created in 1996, Tonel No 3-4 is a single-varietal, particularly vigorous Alicante Bouschet from the best vineyard (Carapetos) and best tonels (numbers 3 and 4).

Inspired by Mouchão and French, Italian and Spanish classics, dentist Miguel Louro planted his Quinta do Mouro vineyard in 1989, located in Estremoz at 402m on schist. Louro favours terroir-driven wines of character, structure and freshness over fruit. Masterful blending of varieties (including 10% Cabernet Sauvignon), ageing in new French oak and a draconian barrel selection lend perfume and finesse to Rótulo Dourado, first trialled in 1999.

Two single-quinta Douro wines highlighted this mountainous northern Portuguese region’s diverse terroir and house styles. First making wine in 1994, Quinta do Crasto is based in the Cima Corgo sub-region, Port’s heartland. In 1998, a southeast-facing centenarian field blend parcel was ring-fenced for Vinha Maria Teresa, an explosive, opulent red (especially in 2011, a powerhouse year).

It starkly contrasted with Casa Ferreirinha, Quinta da Leda 2008’s classical lines – a house style forged by the Douro pioneer in 1952, with Barca Velha. In the drier Douro Superior sub-region, the extreme diurnal temperature range accentuates structure. Made from Leda’s block-planted vines – six cosseted parcels, also earmarked for Barca Velha – the earlier drinking Quinta da Leda is poised, especially in 2008, which was a mild year.

Top echelon ports are usually multi-quinta blends, for structure and balance, but not Quinta do Noval Vintage Port or Kopke Colheita Port. Continuing the single-quinta theme, they are forged from exceptional terroir.

That terroir surely accounts for Quinta do Noval’s history of eccentric vintage declarations, starting with the Pinhão Valley quinta’s legendary 1931 vintage, and explains why it stands out in generally declared years, such as 2000.

Bottled on demand, after lengthy barrel-ageing, the supreme skills of the cellar master – a great Portuguese tradition – come to the fore at Kopke and Blandy’s, in Madeira. It also helps that grapes are sourced from the middle and upper terraces of Kopke’s Quinta de Sao Luiz. Rising to 600m, it contributes to Kopke’s supremely elegant house style.

Freshness, indeed bracing acidity, is a given in Madeira’s Atlantic climate. Buying over 50% of the island’s Malmsey grapes to produce Madeira’s sweetest style, the expertise of Blandy’s shines in the precision and balance of the 1981, the last remaining barrel of which was bottled in 2019 – producing just 999 bottles.

Rare museum wines tasted and rated by Sarah Ahmed

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£5,000 bottles of wine are usually the preserve of the revered estates of France’s Burgundy, Bordeaux and Champagne regions (with Napa producers getting a look in now and again), so it’s a bold move for a Portuguese winery to release a wine – albeit a century-old Tawny Port – which retails north of £5k.

The Honore Very Old Tawny Port from Quinta do Crasto is not just very old (it is a blend of wines that were all produced pre-1918) it is also very rare; just 400 bottles were produced, one to represent each year since the Quinta was founded in 1615 and the wine being bottled.Just over a century ago Quinta do Crasto was bought by Constantino de Almeida, founder of the renowned Constantino wine house dedicated to the production and export of Port. It is wines from his private collection, all put into barrel before he purchased the estate in 1918, which make up the blend of the Honore Very Old Tawny Port.

Today the estate is owned and managed by Constantino de Almeida’s granddaughter Leonor Roquette, her husband Jorge Roquette and their children Tomás and Miguel. It was their decision in 2015 to create two one-off wines in honour of the people who have worked on the estate over the 400 years since it was founded.

Alongside the Honore Tawny, Quinta do Crasto released a Douro red wine also named Honore. It is a blend of wines from the 2015 vintage of the Quinta’s top two vineyards Vinha Maria Teresa and Vinha da Ponte. Just 1615 numbered magnums were produced of this hedonistic blend.

What you get for your £5k (as well as the wine)

You cannot release a wine like the Honore Very Old Tawny Port (priced £5,103) without going to town on the packaging, and no corners have been cut here. The wine comes in a numbered hand-blown crystal decanter housed within a walnut box, emboldened with hand-sewn leather and sterling silver (pictured top).

The Honore Douro red – retail price £783 – comes in a numbered gatefold-boxed Magnum, complete with coffee-table book.

Speaking about Quinta do Crasto’s premium vision at a recent tasting in London to launch the Honore wines Miguel Roquette said: ‘We want Vinha Maria Teresa to be Portugal’s DRC,’ which is ambitious for an estate which can document its history of Port production back to 1615, but produced its first Douro wines in 1994.

Other ‘iconic’ Douro wines from the Quinta were on show at the tasting, including the Vinha Maria Teresa and Vinha da Ponte wines which come from steep stone-terraced vineyards on a dramatic spur overlooking the Douro river.

Around 50 different grape varieties contribute complexity and balance to these field blend parcels which are only made in exceptional years. Both wines enjoy ‘grand cru’ status in the Douro and are consistently of the highest quality and eminently age-worthy; their reputation is deserved.

All the latest 2016 releases hail from a generally declared year for vintage Ports, feted for remarkable freshness and fruit purity. So it is for the wines, notwithstanding the customary heady concentration of Maria Teresa and Ponte, a function of old field blend parcels originally planted for Port.

In this refined vintage, winemaker Manuel Lobo achieved the requisite level of elegance to produce Crasto’s first Touriga Franca – a grape that he describes as ‘sometimes a bit rustic’. More finely framed, both it and Crasto’s single-varietal Tinta Roriz (aka Spain’s Tempranillo) and Touriga Nacional come from higher, younger vineyards planted with wine in mind by Roquette’s father, Jorge.

Tasting the Quinta do Crasto Honore and 2016 wines:

In 1986, Cuvaison Estate in Napa employed a young Portuguese intern who declared: ‘My first wine is going to be a monster, but in 20 years I’ll be making fine wines.’ That intern was Dirk Niepoort, and the journey he predicted – evocative labels from Robustus (his first 1990 Douro red) to Charme (launched in 2002) – reflects not only this now fêted fifth-generation Port and winemaker’s progress, but also a region-wide direction of travel.

Douro wines of quality have grown up fast in sophistication, number and diversity. Not only Douro DOC red wines (my focus here), but also white and latterly rosé wines – all three together represented, in 2017, 36% of the Douro Valley’s production. Port represented 56%, with the balance taken up by Duriense Vinho Regional wines, sparkling Moscatel and non-Port fortified styles.

First footsteps

It seems remarkable that, until recently, the world’s first demarcated and regulated wine region (established 1756) showed little ambition for making wine as opposed to Port. First made in 1952, Casa Ferreirinha’s iconic red Barca Velha was virtually a lone voice in the wilderness. Back then, remote Douro wineries had no electricity, which, together with buoyant Port sales, explains why Douro winemaking lacked impetus until the 1990s.

Making wine in an extreme continental climate (‘nine months of winter, three months of hell’ as the local saying has it) without modern equipment was not only daunting, but also commercially irrelevant.

Scroll down for Sarah Ahmed’s pick: 20 top Douro reds

However, 1986 was a game-changing year. Portugal joined the European Union, providing funds to research grape varieties and develop vineyards and wineries that were better suited to producing wine. This and Ramos Pinto’s pioneering work at Quinta de Ervamoira during the 1980s sparked a new wave of planting. The relatively flat, virgin site was the first to be planted vertically (avoiding the need for terracing) and block planted (single varietal, not field blend), helping to identify those ‘top five’ varieties – Touriga Nacional, Touriga Franca, Tinta Roriz, Tinto Cão and Tinta Barroca – that became the mainstay of modern block-planted vineyards.

João Nicolau de Almeida recalls working with his uncle, José António Ramos Pinto Rosas. Rather than adapt traditional Port vineyards for non-fortified wine, Rosas wanted somewhere ‘ideal for modern, well thought out wine-growing, making use of varietal and scientific knowledge,’ with scope for cost and labour-saving mechanisation and irrigation.

Describing Douro winemaking as ‘very young, with only 20 years’ serious exploration’, leading winemaker Jorge Moreira (Poeira, Quinta de La Rosa, Real Companhia Velha) recalls the early days, when ‘Port gave us lots of misconceptions which, initially, hid two key things – acidity and a sense of the vineyards, because Ports were traditionally made by houses using bought grapes.’ Focused on well-ripened fruit – with a relative disregard for acidity and rapid, vigorous extraction for concentration and tannin (where tannin, sugar and alcohol underwrite longevity) – Port’s model did not serve the first wave of modern Douro wines well. They could be ‘Porty’, especially when, observes Moreira, there was no existing tradition of using new oak or small-format barriques and the mantra, in the 1990s, was: ‘If you want to make good wines, use 100% or 200% new oak’. When top wines were seen to age less well after five years than second wines, he says, ‘it opened our eyes’. So what happened next?

The second wave

Keen to avoid early mistakes, fourth-generation Port shippers the Symingtons partnered with Bruno Prats when they started making wine in 1999. Deferring to the Bordeaux veteran’s expertise, flagship red Prats & Symington Chryseia was fermented in temperature-controlled stainless steel tanks, not foot-trodden in shallow, open lagares (as in Port production), and aged in 400-litre French oak to preserve the fruit – for Prats, the ‘magic’ of Douro wines.

With exemplary tannin management, the resulting polished, elegant style has encouraged other producers, including Poças Júnior, to go for the French approach – adopting a more international style. The first instinct, says Poças Júnior’s viticulturist Maria Manuel Maia, ‘was to leverage tannins and power’, but hiring Hubert de Boüard of Bordeaux’s Château Angélus in 2014 has seen Poças embrace ‘freshness, elegance and balance’, using de Boüard’s experience of oak and blending vineyard parcels. Qualities readily apparent back in 2015, when I compared the 2007 and 2014 vintages of the top wine Símbolo.

Many continue to foot-tread, sometimes fermenting top wines in lagares, but extraction is longer and gentler for finer tannins, and fermentation temperatures better geared to maintaining fruit. Especially when made from old field-blend vineyards, these wines are a touch wilder – more reflective of their rugged, mountainous origins. It helps that subtler oak allows the Douro’s intrinsic characteristics to shine.

At Quinta do Vale Meão, Francisco Olazabal points out, ‘tannin is something that is not lacking in most Douro varieties’, so his barrels are now ‘more neutral, with less toast, less wood sweetness and tannin’. In another common shift, he uses less new oak. Olazabal is confident the wines will still age well; indeed most producers believe that better balanced recent vintages will age better.

A pendulum swing

Chief among them is Niepoort, whose quest for freshness has seen him push the envelope hardest on earlier picking and big-format oak (foudres and vats). Since 2013, the wines have been whittled down, with less overt fruit and oak, and freshness and terroir expression to the fore. Particularly in 2017, the driest, earliest vintage on record.

At a pre-release tasting of premier 2017 Douro reds in June, Niepoort’s Batuta, Redoma and Vertente contrasted starkly with other wines that were deeply coloured and concentrated with imposing tannins. I asked Niepoort if the pendulum has swung too far, verging on under-ripeness or under-extraction, which, as Moreira vividly puts it, ‘can steal the character of a place’. Conceding ‘perhaps a little’, Niepoort nonetheless believes ‘we are absolutely on the right track’, because bottling the ‘perfect wine’ (such as his 2011s) does not allow for ‘growth’ in bottle, hence now ‘bottling with a bit of lightness’. Time will tell, as it has for Australian Chardonnay (where debate raged about picking dates); some early-picking producers have been vindicated, others’ wines simply lacked flavour ripeness.

While Douro reds are typically full-bodied or at the fuller end of the medium-bodied spectrum, I welcome the diversification into emphatically drinkable, fresh, lower-alcohol wines, especially mid-priced examples, whose translucent fruit and fresh acidity articulates the Douro’s wild herb, floral, spice and mineral notes.

Take Luis Seabra’s wines, which showcase whole-bunch ferments – another tool increasingly used to create a sense of freshness and levity, not least because, says Seabra, ‘it forces me not to extract too much’. Or Olazabal’s cousin, António Olazabal Ferreira, who launched Portugal Boutique Winery in 2016 with an un-oaked red, Boina.

Inspired by Roman and Cistercian practices, Mateus Nicolau de Almeida’s fresh, floral Curral Teles Alpha is a ‘Vinho Vermelho’ – ‘red [less extracted], not purple,’ he emphasises. Whole bunches are foot-trodden in a calcatórium (a lagare for crushing only) then pressed; only the must is fermented in cement tank.

Winemakers’ playground

Fresher wines also illustrate a greater understanding of the Douro’s intricate terroir – beyond the existing three sub-regions, whose progressively warmer, drier climates are mirrored by Mateus Nicolau de Almeida’s Trans Douro Express range: westernmost Baixo Corgo (Atlantic/Mediterranean), Cima Corgo (Mediterranean) and easternmost Douro Superior (Mediterranean/continental). With multiple aspects and altitudes (100m to 850m above sea level) – which, observes Niepoort, differentiate the Douro from other classic regions – Douro DOC winemakers have led the way in interrogating this large region’s 42,023ha of vineyard.

While the Port vineyard classification awards 240 points to vineyards up to 150m and deducts 900 points for those over 650m, altitude is beneficial for wines’ balance and finesse. As the name of Ramos Pinto’s Duas Quintas suggests, Ervamoira is not the sole source of grapes for this wine. Adopting Barca Velha’s successful recipe, they are blended with grapes from a higher, 600m vineyard.

With the growth of Douro DOC and climate change concerns, today’s focus on elevation is unprecedented. Although ‘the oldest vines are adapted, more ready to cope’, Pedro Garcias at Mapa says ‘people with lower vineyards are worried’. Selling his lower Douro Superior vineyard funded the purchase of a 600m vineyard in Alijó, Cima Corgo. Tiago Sampaio (Folias de Baco) has planted Pinot Noir and Tinta Francisca there for single-varietal wines, while his Uivo Renegado – a sappy 50/50, white/red old field-blend wine – reflects a niche revival of lighter-bodied ‘palhete’ or ‘clarete’ wines. Luís Pedro Cândido da Silva’s feather-light 9% alcohol Primata Touriga Nacional 2016 comes from a 600m vineyard with dramatic night-time temperature drops; it captures Touriga’s fragrance in a uniquely fresh, pared-back style.

From the Douro’s highest point, the granite and quartz slopes of Serra do Reboredo, Luís Leocádio (Titan of Douro) makes intensely characterful, mineral, fresh wines from un-grafted, 150-year-old vineyards planted at 700m-850m by his wife’s great grandfather.

Detailed exploration

Pinhão Valley is famous for Port but, in relatively high vineyards (rising to 400m-480m), Sandra Tavares and Jorge Serôdio Borges (Wine & Soul) and Moreira make consummately balanced, ageworthy wines. Located on opposite sides of the valley, site specifics distinguish them. Elegant, more acid-driven, Poeira comes from Moreira’s north-facing, afternoon-shaded vineyard in Provesende. Wine & Soul’s riper, darker, muscular Pintas is from a sunnier, south-facing site in Vale de Mendiz which, observes Moreira, integrates oak more readily. Producing wines closer to Poeira, Wine & Soul’s Manoella vineyard reflects a slightly higher Vale de Mendiz site and the humidity and fresh breeze from surrounding forests.

Exploring the Douro’s native varieties (more than 100) also plays into the pursuit of freshness and diversity. Old field-blend vineyards bring great complexity and, championing them, Tavares argues: ‘Why select a few varieties when they are so adapted, with much less water need, and wines from the block-plantings of the late- 1990s and 2000s taste variety- or clone-driven, rather than site-driven?’

Reflecting that his great-grandfather got it right, Tiago Alves de Sousa (of Alves de Sousa) explains that as they are planted at higher density, traditional field-blend vineyards cover more soil, decreasing water loss through soil evaporation; also, because more inter-vine competition reduces vigour, less water is lost through leaf transpiration. He is co-planting mixed native grape parcels (‘just a bit more organised than before’) for genetic diversity.

Similarly (and, to maintain profile), Wine & Soul and Quinta do Crasto are using massal selection to replicate old vineyards. According to genetic research, at least 49 different (red and white) varieties produce Crasto’s single-parcel red Vinha Maria Teresa – a powerhouse of great complexity and structure. Looking beyond the ‘top five’ varieties, Real Companhia Velha’s Séries label bottles individual varieties from old field-blend vineyards, pinpointing fresher grapes such as Rufete, Malvasia Preta, Cornifesto, Bastardo and Tinta Francisca.

A new world

Working with varied terroir and block-planted and field-blend vineyards, the Symingtons are the Douro’s largest vineyard owner and buy approximately 17% of the region’s grapes. Rob Symington, the first fifth-generation member to join the business, is overseeing its wide-ranging sustainability project. He reports that without irrigation, they would have lost all the crop in some Douro Superior vineyards, because ‘vines can adapt to quite serious extremes of temperature but can’t function for any period of time without water’. Accordingly, their three ‘grape variety libraries’ are being monitored to assess the wine and Port quality of lesser-known/used varieties and identify those most resistant to drought and heat.

Building on Rosas’ vision at Ervamoira, cutting-edge, smart deficit irrigation is now in place for 25% of their vineyards, with 95% in the Douro Superior, whose drier conditions encouraged the Symingtons to create the region’s largest organic vineyard. Here, they are trialling VineScout – a self-propelled, electrically powered robot for monitoring vineyards’ parameters, including soil humidity and leaf moisture.

From a slow start, wine has diversified the Douro’s repertoire beyond all recognition. Reflecting on progress since Ervamoira, João Nicolau de Almeida observes: ‘Being much closer to the vineyard and nature, we are returning to the past, but with scientific knowledge.’ This blend of tradition and science, combined with the Douro’s unique blend of terroir and grape varieties, makes it one of the world’s most compelling regions and, thankfully, provides the foundation to adapt and survive into the future.

Sarah Ahmed is an awarded wine writer, educator and judge specialising in Portugal and Australia, publishing her own site at www. thewinedetective.co.uk

See Sarah Ahmed’s pick: 20 top Douro reds

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Tasting Quinta do Noval’s single-varietal wines

Touriga Nacional is known for making darkly coloured, rich, tannic and complex wines, most commonly around a concentrated kernel of black fruits.

It enjoys ageing and, although best known for its role in the Douro Valley’s Port blends, has drawn comparisons to Cabernet Sauvignon during the resurgence for unfortified, Portuguese red wines so far this century.

Despite having a reputation for low yields and being difficult to cultivate, Touriga Nacional also stands up relatively well to heat and has shown resistance to fungal diseases in vineyards.

These are key reasons why Bordeaux winemakers recently saw fit to include Touriga Nacional among one of seven ‘new’ grape varieties to be allowed into blends for Bordeaux and Bordeaux Supérieur appellation wines from next year.

In California, producer Larkmead last week named Touriga Nacional as one of the varieties being planted in its new research vineyard, near to Calistoga.

Both moves reflect efforts to mitigate the anticipated effects of climate change.

But many wine critics and winemakers have long pondered why Touriga Nacional has not achieved greater acclaim before, irrespective of its ability to withstand global warming.

This is a cautious traveller, both domestically and further afield.

Despite a strong claim to be Portugal’s signature grape, Beverley Blanning MW wrote in Decanter in 2004 that Touriga Nacional was starting to be considered by more winemakers in southern Portugal – beyond its heartlands of the Douro and the Dão.

In 2001, John Downes MW wrote in Decanter that Touriga’s red wine potential had yet to be discovered internationally.

‘What’s the bet an Aussie winemaker discovers its powers in a warm French region,’ Downes said. ‘Maybe we’ll soon see Touriga D’Oc. Don’t forget it was my idea!’

Australia itself is one of the producer countries that has shown most interest in Touriga Nacional in the intervening years. In 2017, Wine Australia called the grape ‘one to watch’.

Back in 2001, Downes referred to Touriga’s ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ character at the time.

‘The smiling side of Touriga Nacional’s character is that with enormous reserves of black fruits and massive mouth-filling tannins, it’s a must for classic vintage Port,’ said Downes, who also detailed rising interest in Touriga within a new generation of unfortified reds in the Douro.

On the ‘darker side’ of Touriga’s character, Downes said, ‘The problems start in the vineyard. Firstly, the grape is an incredibly low yielder, often giving less than half a litre of juice per vine. The vines are difficult to cultivate and although the yield is low the plant’s vigour is very high.’

Touriga Nacional’s traditional use in blends may also mean that it has not garnered the publicity of a solo performer.

In Port, it is one of the five central varieties, alongside Touriga Franca, Tinto Cão, Tinta Barroca and Tinta Roriz – better known as Tempranillo.

For unfortified reds, Touriga Nacional varietal wines have increasingly come to the fore in the last couple of decades, but blending has also been common, such as with Touriga Franca, to bring balance in the glass.

Blanning wrote, ‘Touriga Nacional is a shining light in the often impenetrable fog of Portuguese grape varieties. In a line-up of Portuguese wines, time and again the sheer quality of this noble grape lifts and distinguishes a blend. Vinified as a single varietal, it can astonish with its depth and complexity.’

Expect to see more of the world talking about Touriga in the decades to come.

Quinta do Noval said its vineyard holdings in the Douro have risen from 145 hectares to 181ha after it bought the neighbouring Quinta do Passadouro estate from the Bohrmann family for an undisclosed fee.

Christian Seely, MD of Noval and also of its owner, Axa Millésimes, said he was excited by the quality of the 36ha of vineyards acquired.

Passadouro has two principal parcels, one in the Pinhão Valley and the other in the Roncão Valley, said Seely.

Both areas were already a source of grapes for Noval’s vintage Ports, said Seely.

Noval doesn’t intend to drop the Passadouro name, however.

‘We intend to maintain the brand of Quinta do Passadouro, which has produced some thrilling wines – both Ports and unfortified red wines – during the Bohrmanns’ time there,’ said Seely.

‘The team of Passadouro will remain with the Quinta and will join the dedicated team of Quinta do Noval.’

Ans Bohrmann, MD and co-owner of Passadouro, said, ‘We are thrilled to have found a strong new owner for Quinta do Passadouro which subscribes to our wine philosophy and will ensure the long-term future of this amazing winery.’

He thanked everyone in the region who has helped Passadouro since it began as ‘a warm-hearted hobby-project of the family, more than 25 years ago’.

Dieter Bohrmann bought the vineyards in 1991 and the family is set to have an ambassadorial role under Noval’s leadership.

Bohrmann added that ‘the family will continue its activities in the wine business focusing on its Burgundy wine project, Domaine Bohrmann.’

Recently published on Decanter Premium: Port 2016 vintage report and top releases

Sarah Ahmed, Beatriz Machado and Nick Oakley tasted 76 value Douro red wines with 3 Outstanding and 14 Highly Recommended…

Entry criteria: producers and UK agents were invited to submit latest-release red wines from the Douro Valley, priced £8-£20 in the UK or equivalent in the US

Scroll down to see the tasting notes & scores

The verdict

Portugal’s indigenous varieties offer a flavour experience like no other, and this great-value selection is the ideal way to discover what makes the wines tick, says Sarah Ahmed…The majority of wines from this tasting hailed from 2017 and 2016 – years that were ‘generally declared’, which is to say outstanding for vintage Port. In the past, this might have meant slim pickings for Douro table wines, especially the ‘back of the queue’ value reds. However, the Douro Valley now has no shortage of vineyards earmarked or planted expressly for wine (as opposed to Port).

In this solid tasting line-up, 34 of the top 46 reds (86pts+) came from 2017 or 2016, reinforcing the fruit and tannin quality of these vintages.Typicity was impressive. As fellow judge Nick Oakley put it: ‘Good acidity and richness; plummy without being too slick and opulent – so, definitely European rather than New World.’

With only one single-varietal red, blends showcased the Douro’s classic melange of plum and red, black and blue currants, berry and cherry fruit. The tell-tale violets, dried rose and bergamot/Earl Grey perfume of Touriga Nacional and Touriga Franca enticed. Gum cistus or rock rose – a local plant – found expression in resinous or menthol nuances. Our tasting notes were liberally sprinkled with references to minerality – dusty schist, saltiness and graphite.

Quick link: See all 76 wines in the panel tasting

This typicity partly derived from the narrow range of grape varieties used. Where specified, the so-called ‘top five’ grapes dominated – Touriga Nacional, Touriga Franca, Tinta Roriz, Tinto Cão and Tinta Barroca (which were recommended in the 1980s, when a substantial vineyard upgrade commenced). The most popular both dominated blends and led them – 17 with Touriga Nacional, 11 with Tinta Roriz (aka Tempranillo) and seven with Touriga Franca. Only three producers mentioned using Sousão (highly valued for freshness and colour), while Tinta da Barca, Tinta Amarela and Tinta Francisca featured once each – though, as Beatriz Machado pointed out, with Tinto Cão these grapes ‘add the dimension of lightness, personality and acidity, which sometimes falls short on the “pretty” [Touriga-focused] blends’.

While older field-blend material was not specifically referenced, it would have been good to see more mid-priced wines reflecting the Douro’s rich diversity and heritage. Portugal Boutique Winery’s lighter-styled Boina Red highlighted the benefits of aged (centenarian) vines, using fast-disappearing varieties such as Gouveio-Preto, Tinta Carvalha, Alicante Bouschet and Alvarelhão.

On the other hand, fruit-driven and supple, Aliança’s super-approachable Foral dos Quatro Ventos 2017 nailed the brief for lower-priced entries. It was one of six unoaked wines: a style which suits this category. Quinta Nova’s trio of 92-pointers also showed an impressive and nuanced grip of the market. In ascending price point order: oaked, with a touch of residual sugar, Pomares was softer, with savoury (Rioja-like) American and French oak; the unoaked Colheita fresh and fruity; and partly oaked Terroir Blend Reserva was elegant, with vivid fruit and refined tannins.

Some wines were marked down because of reduction (dumbing down the fruit) or elbowy tannins, which needed more time in bottle (or, as Machado observed, less time on skins or press fractions). Conversely, entries from 2011 – an outstanding year – were past their best (one would have hoped producers had no stock left to submit at these price points).

However, in general, oak and acidity were well-integrated and top scorers showed lovely typicity, fruit intensity, balance and length.

Scroll down to see the tasting notes & scores

The scores

76 wines tasted

Exceptional 0

Outstanding 3

Highly Recommended 14

Recommended 29

Commended 22

Fair 6

Poor 0

Faulty 2

Top value Douro reds from the panel tasting

Quick link to see all 76 wines from this panel tasting

About value Douro red wines

Home to most of Portugal’s finest non-fortified red wines, the range and quality to be found at lower price levels in the Douro Valley is improving fast too, says Sarah Ahmed

The Douro – the world’s first demarcated and regulated wine region – lies some 100km inland from the Atlantic-facing city of Oporto and tracks a 100km stretch of the Douro river. Declared in 1756, this northern Portuguese region’s original zone was focused on Port wine production. It took another 200 years for a Douro (table) wine to make its mark. Inspired by Fernando Nicolau de Almeida’s visit to Bordeaux, that wine was the Casa Ferreirinha Barca Velha. First made in 1952 (when electricity had yet to reach this rugged, remote region), it is Portugal’s most iconic fine wine.

It was not until the 1990s that others followed suit, highlighting the region’s potential for table wines. Unsurprisingly, given the region’s extreme (‘nine months of winter, three months of hell’) continental climate, measly yields and terrain so precipitous that its vineyards are almost exclusively hand-tended, they adopted Casa Ferreirinha’s ambitious model, focusing on full-bodied, well-structured, ageworthy reds.

Much to explore

Since then, supported by EU funds, producers have tooled up for and gained experience in Douro table winemaking (red, white, rosé). While traditional old field-blend parcels feature a mix of tens of varieties (red and white), the introduction of block planted (single varietal) parcels in the 1980s honed winemakers’ understanding of each grape’s role, helping them target wine styles and price points.

Latterly, Douro wines account for up to 50% of the region’s overall production, which includes a sizeable rump of mid-priced and value-driven wines.

Leaving aside the economics (some table wine grapes are being sold below the cost of production), the growth of wines makes sense, given the Douro is home to the world’s largest area of mountain vineyards and incorporates three sub-regions (see map above). Travelling east, Atlantic influence (which imparts freshness) dwindles and, as the climate becomes progressively warmer and drier, wines become richer and fuller-bodied. In reality, there are many variables, including altitudes (100m-900m), aspects and topography of the region’s fretwork of river valleys. Additionally, an eye-popping selection of more than 100 approved grape varieties (64 of them red). As for soils, while predominantly schistous, transitional granite (largely planted to white grapes) accentuates freshness. Small wonder winemakers call the Douro a playground!

Most wines are varietal blends, and many come from multiple vineyards. Usually released within a year or two, ripe fruit (blue, black and red) abounds, with complex mineral and (with Tourigas Nacional and Franca), floral or bergamot notes. With a relatively short history, Douro wines are constantly being refined. You can find full-bodied, high-extract wines with elevated alcohol (14.5% or more) and, in line with current trends, medium-bodied, paler reds at 13% alcohol or lower, carrying less oak. Letting the fruit shine, un-oaked entry-level wines are also on the up.

Douro reds

Vineyard area 250,000ha, of which 42,023ha under vine, cultivated by 21,426 farmers (43% of whom own less than 0.5ha of vines)

Production (2017/2018) 1,448,874hl, of which 852,081hl (59%) fortified, 596,793hl (41%) table wine

Top five grape varieties: Touriga Franca 10, 675ha Tinta Roriz 6,402ha Touriga Nacional 4,524ha Tinta Barroca 3,320ha Tinta Amarela 1,580ha

Douro reds: Know your vintages

• 2018 Extreme weather (drought, rainfall, hail, heat) scythed production. Low yields mean the best wines will be concentrated. A growers’ year; be selective.
• 2017 Exceptionally dry, warm and early (picking began in August). Flavour and tannin ripeness were advanced, but acid levels remained high, resulting in inky, well-concentrated, bright-fruited wines.
• 2016 A wet winter and spring, hot, dry summer and welcome mid-September showers produced favourable ripening conditions. Excellent, well-structured reds with good acidity.
• 2015 An even year produced consistent, very balanced wines, with lovely fruit and smooth, ripe tannins. Drinking well now.
• 2014 Unsettled weather throughout the year and the wettest September for 80 years resulted in less concentrated, juicy wines, the best elegant. Drier, the Douro Superior fared better.
• 2013 Productive year. Promising until heavy late- September rains; flavour and tannin ripeness issues. Best wines picked beforehand or from the drier Douro Superior.
  

See all of the wines in the panel tasting

The judges

Sarah Ahmed

Ahmed is an awarded wine writer, educator and judge specialising in Portugal and Australia. As well as publishing her own site, thewinedetective.co.uk, she has contributed to Hugh Johnson’s Pocket Wine Book, Jancis Robinson MW’s The Oxford Companion to Wine and The World Atlas of Wine.

Beatriz Machado

Machado is wine director at award-winning luxury wine hotel The Yeatman, in Porto, where she has been responsible for developing a 1,300 reference wine cellar – the world’s most comprehensive collection of Portuguese table wines and Ports. She graduated in viticulture and enology at UC Davis in California.

Nick Oakley

Oakley is the founding director of Oakley Wine Agencies, one of the UK’s leading specialist importers of Portuguese and northwest Spanish wines, which today counts most major supermarket groups among its clients. In recent years, the company has also started supplying wines to overseas markets.

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After 40 years working for the family firm, Symington Family Estates CEO Paul Symington retires this month. At a recent tasting of vintage Ports and aged tawnies, and in a follow-up phone conversation with Amy Wislocki, he explained passionately why the Douro must change...

On the face of it, the Port houses and farmers of the Douro have much to celebrate this Christmas. Vintage Port is enjoying a renaissance, with the excellent 2016s selling out within a few months of release earlier this year, and the 2007 and 2011 vintages fetching high prices on the secondary market. The popularity of tawny Port is also booming – worldwide sales grew by €21.3m between 2010 and 2017, according to Port Wine Institute figures.

Yet there is a chill wind blowing. Vintage Port accounts for just 6% of sales by value, with tawnies adding little more; and the fortified wine category as a whole is in decline. The industry faces unprecedented challenges, outlined by Symington in a compelling article he wrote for Portuguese national newspaper Público last autumn.

‘The Douro is the largest area of mountain vineyard on the planet, and is entirely hand picked due to the steep inclines, at very low yields,’ he explains. ‘It costs around 90 cents to grow a kilo of grapes in the Douro, compared to around 30 cents per kilo in Chile, 40 cents in France, and 29 cents in Spain. And yet you can find a good bottle of Douro table wine on UK supermarket shelves for around £7. This is because grapes for table wine are being sold below the cost of production. We have to educate consumers that these extraordinary wines from the Douro are worth paying a higher price for – otherwise it’s not sustainable. Real costs have to be reflected.’

Strict quotas and yields

The law is also at fault, argues Symington, who is hopeful that the Government has listened to the case for change and will work to address the severe distortions that have arisen from having two great wines – Port and Douro table wines – with very different regulatory systems. The production of grapes for Port is governed by strict quotas and yields, and so farmers typically receive around €1.40 per kilo, whereas the production of grapes for table wine is not subject to the same limitations, with price determined by the free market. As a result, the typical price per kilo received by farmers for table wine grapes is around €0.25 to €0.40, well below the cost of production.

‘There are currently 21,426 farmers in the Douro, 43% of whom own less than 0.5ha of vines,’ says Symington. ‘Despite owning two times more vineyard than any other shipper, we work ourselves with 969 farmers. The viability of their businesses is crucial, or the Douro will revert to scrub.’

In a perfect storm of circumstances, the farmers’ livelihood is complicated by other factors, too. Their number is declining drastically and their average age is growing. Many smallholdings are underequipped and their future is increasingly doubtful as the younger generation flocks to the cities or coast to find easier work. The growing hospitality and tourism industries are attracting many young workers, thereby creating a severe labour shortage in the same vineyards that visitors to the Douro so admire.

One of the largest European wine-growing areas

It’s also worth noting that the Douro is one of the largest wine-growing areas in Europe, with 43,479ha of vineyard – almost half of the vineyard area of the whole of Germany. ‘The region certainly has too many vineyards to be managed by hand, so we need a natural reduction in the vineyard area,’ Symington states. He recommends a slow reduction of the area farmed by around 5,000ha over the next decade, with a system whereby elderly farmers who have no successors and/or do not wish to continue can be adequately compensated for abandoning their vineyard.

As Symington steps down to spend more time in his own vineyards, it’s clear that this beautiful wine region is at a crossroads. ‘For too long too many people have viewed the Douro as a mysterious, remote but beautiful time warp where Port and table wine can be made cheaply. The last two harvests have shown that change is imperative if the unique wines from our low-yielding indigenous vines and extraordinary schist soils can continue to be made.’

10 and 20 year old tawny Ports – panel tasting results

The Symington Family Estates group, most famous for Port production, has announced that it is to build a dedicated winery for its growing portfolio of Douro DOC table wines.

The new winery is expected to cost between 4-5 million euros and will be built on its Quinta do Ataide property in the remote Vilafrica Valley in the extreme north east of the Douro.

‘The landscaping has already begun and the plan is to have the new winery ready for the 2020 harvest,’ said Paul Symington, chairman and MD of Symington Family Estates, speaking at a recent London masterclass entitled, ‘The Douro – 20 Years On.’

‘This is a big investment decision for us and it is based upon the fact that, after two decades, we are now extremely confident of the quality of our table wines.

‘The aim will be to produce high-end red and white Douro DOC wines, because we don’t believe that it is economically sensible or sustainable to produce Douro wines at £5-6 retail. I fear that that market is a suicide mission.’

According to Symington, the Douro now produces around 4.5 million cases of table wine per year. In the UK, we sell less than 4% of that total production, with less than 10,000 cases.

The Symington range begins around the £9-10 price point with its Altano Red and White.

The range also includes more premium estate grown offerings from its Quinta do Ataide and Quinta do Vesuvio properties. In addition, it also makes wines under its P + S label in conjunction with Bruno Prats, former owner of Château Cos d’Estournel in Bordeaux.

Previously, the Family Estates wines were made at Symington’s Quinta do Sol facility in the Douro’s Baixo Corgo.

According to Symington, all the DOC equipment there will be moved to the new winery. New equipment will also be purchased to enable the winery to meet all of the group’s needs for the production of its table wines.

Charles Symington will continue to oversee the winemaking. The new facility’s oenologist will be Pedro Correia who has specialised in table wine production with the company since 1999.

Since the family began producing Douro DOC wines in the 1990s, Correia and Charles Symington have focused on indigenous varieties and most notably Touriga Nacional, Touriga Franca, Tinta Barocca and Alicante Bouschet.

The whites include Malvasia Fina, Viosinho, Rabigato and Moscatel Galego.

In 2014, Charles Symington also created an experimental ‘variety library’ at Quinta do Ataide, comprising 53 different grape varieties painstakingly collected from across the Douro and beyond.

‘Perhaps what is most exciting is that these native, low-yielding varieties perform so well in the Douro’s climate and provide such exceptional distinctive qualit’, said Symington. ‘It’s one of the reasons why we are confident of creating world-class table wines from the Douro’.

Updated 15/03/2018: Winery investment amount is euros not dollars

Read Steven Spurrier's profile of this rare Portuguese wine, and a favourite of retired football manager Sir Alex Ferguson. Decanter Premium members can access Spurrier's exclusive tasting notes and ratings for 13 Barca Velha vintages stretching back to 1964

Barca Velha was born in the Porto Ferreira stable and named in honour of its famous matriarch, Dona Antonia Adelaide Ferreira, who was affectionately nicknamed ‘Ferreirinha’ – or ‘little Ferreira’ in Portuguese.

Continue reading below

Exclusively for Decanter Premium members: See all of Steven Spurrier’s Barca Velha wine tasting notes

The history

Dona Antonia was a much loved and admired character within the Port trade, continually driving innovation as well as providing much needed support to the Douro families.

She believed that quality was the only route to success and so created and invested in some of the best Quintas in the Douro, at one point owning more than 20, including great names such as Porto, Seixo, Vargellas and Vesuvio.

She was also responsible for laying down the best and most complete library stock the Port industry had ever seen.

But the dream of transforming the elegant, fine and complex style of Ferreira’s Ports into a dr y wine was not realised until 1952, 56 years after Dona Antonia’s death, with the first vintage of Barca Velha, made by Ferando Nicolau de Almeida.

Casa Ferreirinha thus became the first house in the Douro dedicated to making a table wine, which has always come from vineyards situated at different altitudes in the Douro Superior region.

Today Quinta da Leda, with its 160 hectares of vines, provides the fruit that is meticulously blended to create Barca Velha, of which only 19 vintages have been released since the 1952, released in 1957.

The winemakers

Only three winemakers have presided over the production of Barca Velha: Fernando Nicolau de Almeida, from 1952 to 1998; Jose-Maria Soares Franco, from 1998 to 2003; and Luis Sottomayor from 2003 to the present.

A Douro legend, Almeida joined Porto Ferreira, where his father was head winemaker, at 16. In 1949, following a visit to Château Calon-Segur in Bordeaux, he found answers to begin to realise Dona Antonia’s dream of producing a table wine from the Douro Superior.

After taking over from his father the following year, against the wishes of the Porto Ferreira board he continued his pioneering investigation into table wine. The 1952 harvest offered conditions suitable for its realisation.

Luis Sottomayor joined the winemaking team in 1989, learning his trade under Almeida. Since 2003 he has led the teams responsible for Casa Ferreirinha, Ferreira, Offley and Sandeman.

High standards

Four or five of the main Douro grapes find themselves in the blend, those from lower altitudes for structure, those from the higher altitudes retaining acidity, all working together for a long-lived structure.

The wine is only bottled when there are no questions about its quality and it is deemed ready. Following three or more years of tasting, the final decision to carry the Barca Velha name rests with the head winemaker. A vintage not quite up to the highest standard instead takes the name Reserva Especial.

Although current winemaker Sottomayor has worked in other wine regions, his commitment to, and knowledge of, the Douro is unsurpassed. He takes great pride in the opportunity he has been given to perpetuate the Barca Velha story, while recognising that he is building upon the creativity and daring of those who first set out to produce this great wine, unaided by the technical advances of today.

Barca Velha vertical – 13 vintages tasted:

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As the Douro River navigates its way between steep mountain slopes, thousands of intertwined vines and traditional stone terraces form a tapestry of rare natural beauty.

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How to get there

Nearest airport: Porto

With recent investments in infrastructure, it has never been easier to reach the valley. In a little over an hour’s drive by car you can reach its heart, Peso da Régua.

But a 2.5-hr train ride, leaving from São Bento train station in Porto, is the most scenic way; while neither the fastest nor the most comfortable, it gives you the best views.

A premium helicopter service from Porto is also available.

Where to visit

A visit to one of the Port wine houses is an excellent way to start discovering the Douro and the world of fortified wine. Quinta do Bomfim, a Symington family property, is an estate famous for making Dow’s which has recently opened a modern visitor’s centre with programmes including vineyard visits and tastings. Quinta do Panascal, one of the prime Fonseca properties, was one of the first visitor centres in the Douro, open throughout the year.

For a more boutique approach, Quinta do Noval is a historic house with some of the most well-preserved terraced vineyards and a manor open for tastings. At Quinta de Nápoles you can witness firsthand how the Niepoort family creates some of the most revered Ports and Douro table wines.

Insider’s tip

Visit the Douro Valley during harvest time, between August and September, so that you can join the locals in a 100-year old tradition of foot-treading in stone lagares.

Contact a few producers before you go to check availability.

With the region’s long winding roads and spectacular views, it is very easy to lose track of the day. For the best experience, set enough time to visit each winery and enjoy a relaxed wine tasting. The beginning of autumn is the ideal time to visit, for the mild weather and the warm, vibrant colours of the vineyards.

Where to eat

The pleasure of eating in the Douro Valley is all about experiencing Portuguese ingredients with local wines. Castas e Pratos, situated inside one of the warehouses of Peso da Régua railway station, delivers a modern food menu and a quality wine list. For a fine-dining experience with a river view, DOC – where many local winemakers are regulars – serves up Rui Paula’s modern cuisine and one of the Douro’s best wine lists.

Where to stay

For the ultimate luxury, stay at the Six Senses Douro Valley and enjoy the views and the pool overlooking the river. For solitude and silence, try Quinta Nova Luxury Winery House, an award-winning luxury boutique hotel with only 11 rooms and breathtaking panoramic views over the vineyards.

Wherever you stay, and for however long, make the time to grab a glass of slightly chilled vintage Port, sit outside on a hill above the river on a hot night and enjoy the pleasure of the Douro’s famous fortified wines.

André Ribeirinho is a Portuguese food and wine entrepreneur who founded online wine platform Adegga.com.

• This originally featured in the top 10 holidays for wine lovers in the February issue of Decanter, on sale now. Subscribe to Decanter here. 

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Win a romantic getaway at Six Senses Douro Valley Hotel and Spa, Portugal 

Decanter has teamed up with Waitrose and will be offering one lucky winner and a guest a romantic getaway at Six Senses Douro Valley Hotel and Spa in Portugal.

To find out how to enter, simply visit your local Waitrose store and pick up a copy of the January issue of Decanter magazine – on sale Wednesday 7 December.

The winner will receive:

• A luxurious two-night stay in the Quinta Superior Double Room
• Daily breakfast buffet for two at the hotel’s restaurant
• A delicious three-course meal with Six Senses wine on both nights at Vale de Abraão restaurant
• A themed wine tasting for two to be selected upon arrival
• A tour of a local vineyard
• One bottle of Quinta Vale D. Maria Douro DOC 2014 for the winner to take home

To find your local Waitrose stockist, click on the map below

The Portuguese winery that produces singer Sir Cliff Richard's range of wines has gone on sale with a nearby property for almost €10m.

Would you like to make Sir Cliff Richard’s wine, Vida Nova and Onda Nova?

The Adega do Cantor winery, or ‘winery of the singer’, has been listed for sale alongside Quinta do Miradouro in Portugal’s Algarve.

The properties have a joint asking price of €9.5m, according to a listing published by estate agency Fine & Country. It said the larger property has four double bedrooms and the smaller one three bedrooms.

Adega do Cantor lies in Guia in central Algarve and was built with the principal purpose of producing Vida Nova and Onda Nova wines from three surrounding estates: Quinta do Moinho, owned by Sir Cliff Richard; Quinta da Miradouro and Vale do Sobreiro.

Anyone buying the properties could well find themselves treading grapes with Sir Cliff himself, one of the UK’s best known music artists with a huge back catalogue of songs ranging from ‘Devil Woman’ to ‘Millenium Prayer’.

‘Sir Cliff is very much involved in producing the wine,’ says Adega do Cantor on its website. ‘When in Portugal he is often seen getting his hands dirty in the vineyard or indeed his feet dirty in the winery.’

Sir Cliff launched his Portuguese wine at the London Wine Fair back in 2002. They are available in the UK today via Wells Wines.

John Stimpfig was greatly entertained by the Duoro Boys at their masterclass at the Decanter Spain and Portugal encounter. Here are his top five wines from the tasting.

The Douro Boys hit town with a midday Masterclass by its Fab Five members: Cristiano van Zeller, Francisco Ferreira, Dirk Niepoort, Francisco Olazabal and Tomas Roquette. And as always, the result was compelling, entertaining and illuminating. So much so that the allotted hour and a half flew by far too quickly.

The ‘boy band’ of wine

Cristiano van Zeller kicked it off by explaining the background to this brilliant winemaking ‘boy band.’ He said, ‘Essentially we are a group of close friends from five Douro properties and five families, with several interconnections. We all go back a long way. Some of us can trace our roots to the early 17th century.’

Dirk Niepoort also pointed out that the Douro Boys ‘don’t sell wines together. So there’s no economic or commercial link. Moreover, we are five producers that are making very different wines. That’s important because we are not trying to make a single style. We each want our own personality.’

‘And we all share a vision of how we see the future of the Douro,’ added van Zeller. ‘Back in the 90s we realised that we needed to move into dry table wines as well as sweet fortified wines.’

• Read: Spain and Portugal star buys of 2015

Of course, it’s tempting to think that dry wines are new in the Douro. But Van Zeller quickly dispelled the myth. ‘For its first 175 years, the Douro only produced dry fortified wines. It only turned sweet in the in the nineteenth century.’

He also pointed out the intense challenges of making any style of wine in the Douro. ‘We have steep hills, 100 plus varieties, very hot summers (up to 51C!) and cold winters. ‘The extreme climate has been described as nine months of winter and three months of hell. But this climate, combined with our unique topography and schist-based terroir gives us the potential to make extraordinary wines.’

Here are five of my favourites from the masterclass:

See photo highlights of the Decanter Spain & Portugal Fine Wine Encounter

Taylor’s Port owner The Fladgate Partnership has re-acquired the Vintage House Hotel it built in the heart of the Douro Valley – more than a decade after selling it.

Taylor’s originally opened the Vintage House Hotel in Douro as the first quality hotel in the midst of some of the finest Port vineyards, at Pinhão in 1998. But, it sold the venue four years later.

Now the company, also owner of Croft, Fonseca and Krohn, as well as the five-star Yeatman Hotel in Oporto, has bought the property and 14,000sq m of adjacent land from ECS, the company responsible for the Fundo Recuperação Turismo, which acquired it in 2013 following economic restructuring.

‘It will provide visitors who stay at The Yeatman in Oporto an opportunity to extend their visit in the Douro,’ said Adrian Bridge, Fladgate CEO.

‘Over the next few years, we will be working with the local authorities to create an improved tourism infrastructure in Pinhão, which we see as the centre of tourism in the Douro Valley, and where we have the potential to create a great visitor experience.’

Decanter.com understands that the extra land bought as part of the deal will allow an extra 30 rooms to be added to the current Vintage House capacity of 43 rooms and suites with river views, although this expansion may not take place for another two or three years.

• SEE: Seven UNESCO World Heritage wine regions to visit

Meanwhile, work is continuing on a new road between Oporto and Pinhão, including a tunnel cutting through the Serra do Marão mountain range, which will cut travel by car by 20 minutes when it opens next year.

The hotel is set to close in January and February 2016 for refurbishment before reopening in March.

Croft Port, one of the oldest names in Port, has opened the doors of its Douro Valley vineyard, Quinta da Roeda, to tourists.

Croft Port’s new visitor centre offers tourists an insight into a working vineyard, with tastings of a range of Croft Ports, tours of the vineyards and wineries and a chance to experience the foot-treading of the grapes.

Quinta da Roeda, near the village of Pinhao in Portugal, has terraced vineyards overlooking the River Duoro.

The vineyards and cellars were extensively renovated when Croft returned to family ownership in 2001, including reintroducing traditional granite lagares – the large tanks used for food-treading grapes.

Tourists will have the opportunity to participate in traditional foot-treading at the visitor centre during harvest time.

• See also: The discovery of Duoro terroir

Croft Port was founded in 1588 and bought the Quinta da Roeda estate in 1889. The estate has been the main source of wine for the firm’s Vintage Ports ever since. Croft Port is also known for making the first ever rosé Port, Croft Pink.

The Alto Douro wine region, where Quinta da Roeda is located, is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The area has been producing wine for around 2,000 years and the landscape is inherently representative of the full range of historic and modern activities associated with wine making.

• See our Spain & Portugal travel guides here

Famed Douro Valley property Quinta do Noval has released a ‘very small quantity’ of 2013 vintage Port, bucking the general trend of non-declaration by major Port houses.

Noval will release fewer than 1,200 cases of 2013 vintage Port, representing less than 3% of the total production of its 143 hectares of vineyards.

Describing the wine’s style as ‘elegant, pure, aromatic, perfectly harmonious and typical of the Quinta do Noval vintage style’, managing director Christian Seely said there was ‘no hesitation’ in declaring the vintage.

The move suggests a change in philosophy at Quinta do Noval in favour of more regular declarations.

‘Quinta do Noval has consistently followed a policy in recent years of declaring a vintage Port, even of very small volume, if even a tiny proportion of the harvest has the quality and style of a Quinta do Noval vintage Port,’ he added.

‘In the tasting room we found certain lots irresistibly delicious, and so decided to make this very small blend of Quinta do Noval vintage Port.’

The 2013 growing season was sunny and dry, but rain during harvest affected overall quality, with vineyards picked early in the harvest generally offering the best potential.

To date, major houses have not declared the 2013 vintage. However, Fonseca Guimaraens – an earlier-drinking style made in years when a classic vintage is not declared – is set to release a 2013 vintage.

George Sandeman, of Port house Sandeman, told Decanter.com last year that economics had a role to play in Port house declarations, alongside quality.

See also:

• Quinta do Noval adds 2012 to list of ‘eccentric’ declarations
• Know your Port

Written by Richard Woodard

It didn’t seem to attract much notice at the time, but the Casa do Douro was finally declared bankrupt and wound up at the end of 2014, with debts of 160m Euros (130m Euros of debt plus 30m Euros of accumulated interest).

Pinhao vineyards in the Douro. Credit: Andrew Jefford

As I described back in 2011, its hapless maladministration was one of a number of factors acting as a check on the Douro’s development and prosperity. Since then, things have both got better and got worse.

The things that matter, perhaps, are those that have got better. Few declared port vintages have ever been more enthusiastically received and sold through than 2011, and wine lovers show a swelling appreciation for the Douro’s table wines, too (sales of table wine grew by 14 per cent in volume and 12 per cent in value in 2014).

For what it’s worth, I’m convinced that the Douro has the potential to rival Bordeaux, Burgundy, Piedmont, Tuscany, Rioja and Napa as a table-wine region – it is a rare world ‘great’ – and that we will all realise as much in fifty years. It was those unfortified red wines, remember, which put the Douro on the wine map, long before fortification became the norm. They were the wines which Samuel Johnson and James Boswell so enjoyed drinking together in London’s late eighteenth-century taverns; they will thrill the thinkers, collectors and writers of the late twenty-first century, too.

The good news was, in an eye-catching way, summed up by the Wine Spectator’s most recent ‘Top 100’ selection, with a hat-tossing result for the Douro: Dow’s 2011 took top slot and two Douro table wines, the 2011 Chryseia and the 2011 Quinta do Vale Meão, took third and fourth places. (The 2011 Leoville-Las Cases limped in at 10th.) Moreover the Spectator’s columnist Matt Kramer spent three months based in Porto last year. The Douro richly deserves influential support of this sort.

So what’s getting worse? Paradoxically, life for the Douro’s farmers. The three Spectator-garlanded bottles loiter around the $100 mark: this is the cream. The milk itself, though, is souring.

‘The last 15 years,’ says Adrian Bridge, managing director of the Taylor Fonseca Port Group, ‘have seen a 25 per cent increase in plantings combined with a ten per cent drop in port sales. The difference is due to table wine.’ What’s wrong with that? ‘These,’ says Paul Symington of Symington Family Estates, ‘are some of the most expensive grapes to grow in the whole of Iberia: the cost is €1.04 per kilo. Port grapes are paid at between €1.30 and €1.40 per kilo, whereas table-wine grapes get as little as 25 cents a kilo, though they come from the same vineyards as the port grapes. It has to change. The farmers cannot survive. The economics simply do not add up. The region is dying a slow death. There has to be a more equitable pricing of grapes. Behind the great thing – this renaissance in table-wine production – is a crisis which needs to be understood and resolved.’

How has this come about? The fundamental problem is that the Douro is administered by a system put in place during the 1930s, when the Douro produced port alone, during a world economic depression and with the nation under the authoritarian and paternalistic regime of Antonio Salazar. Port farmers are given an annually adjusted quota (‘beneficio’) each year for the amount of port they are allowed to make, depending on quality and on regional stock levels. No farm is allowed to produce port alone; the excess goes for table wine, whose production is not subject to a quota – and the overall permissible yield for both port and wine is set unrealistically high, at 7,500 kg/ha, or about 55 hl/ha. In fact few places in the Douro are able to produce grapes with a yield much above 42 hl/ha, and the finest quality vineyards of all produce markedly less than that.

Since volume port sales have been declining and the region was historically overstocked, the port quota has been reduced in recent years, and is in effect tradable (though this is technically illegal). Farmers struggle to cover their costs by using or trading their port quota entitlement, and then try to scrape a little profit with table-grape sales, even if those are sold below cost price. It means that the official market in Douro grapes is one of perfect insincerity.

‘What we really bring about,’ says Adrian Bridge, ‘is a distortion of the market. It’s not qualitative. The farmer has no incentive to grow great grapes, since poor-quality grapes with beneficio will always find a market. Even professional farmers are not investing in their vineyards any more. There are more farms for sale in the Douro than there have ever been. The longer we sweep the problem under the carpet, the more difficult it will be to resolve.’

As so often in Europe, though, the difficulty is that a viticultural problem is simultaneously a social problem – and so solving it is not just an economic matter but a political matter, too. The bitter truth is that the Douro has too many farmers: 17,000 with less than 1 ha, and only 660 with 10 ha or more. Beneficio keeps them in business – at a kind of starveling level. ‘Beneficio is somehow killing the region,’ says table-wine producer Tomas Roquette of Quinta do Crasto in summary, ‘yet the region is not economically ready for the end of benefício.’ That is what Paul Symington calls the Douro dilemma.

Half a century hence, of course, the quota system will be long gone and the market in Douro grapes will be a free one. There will be many fewer farmers, and a set of sub-regional DOCs to replace the inadequate single Douro DOC which covers table wine at present. The great Douro table-wine farms will be as well known and as keenly followed as Medoc chateaux or the domains of leading Burgundy or Barolo growers. Great port will co-exist alongside great table wine, but there will be more of the latter than the former, and the historical wheel will be approaching full circle. Quite how we get there, though, is opaque.

See also:

• The discovery of Douro terroir
• 10 top terroir-driven Douro wines

Written by Andrew Jefford

At the London launch of Casa Ferreirinha’s Reserva Especial 2007, we caught up with Luis Sottomayor, the winemaker of both this renowned Douro wine and arguably Portugal’s most famous table wine, Barca Velha.

What is special about the release of Casa Ferreirinha Reserva Especial 2007?

Luis Sottomayor: It’s the first one I’ve handled from start to finish since I became head winemaker for Sogrape in the Douro in 2007 [though he has worked as a winemaker for Casa Ferreirinha since 1989]. I decided on the 1997, 2001 and 2003 vintages of Reserva Especial and the 2000 and 2004 Barca Velha, but this is the one I’ve seen all the way from vineyard to bottle.

You’re going to say it’s one of the best vintages ever, aren’t you?

LS: Yes, but it is! In fact, it if we hadn’t just released what I consider is the best-ever vintage of Barca Velha, the 2004, then this 2007 Reserva Especial could have been a Barca Velha. [There have only been 16 vintages of Reserva Especial since 1960 and 17 vintages of Barca Velha since 1952]

What is the difference between them and how do you decide?

LS: It is a tough and personal decision. I can’t define it. The two are born as the same wine and maturation dictates what it will become. Both have to be fresh, structured and ageworthy and partner with food. The wine is tasted regularly of course, but the decision on what to label it is not made until the wine has spent at least five years in bottle [a Burgundy bottle unique to these two wines in the Casa Ferreirinha stable]. I make the final decision at my dining table.

Has there ever been a time when you think the wrong decision was made?

LS: Once, in 1998, we had to rebottle the wine as a colheita because we did not think it was good enough for either Barca Velha or Reserva Especial. And I think maybe, on tasting the 1986 Reserva Especial, it could have been a Barca Velha. It was before my time with the company, but Fernando Nicolau de Almeida [the creator of Barca Velha] said there was a little bit of greenness on the aroma so that’s why it wasn’t chosen. I think that was from Portuguese oak, which was used then, not unripeness. You taste the wine now and that green note has disappeared, so maybe…The 1994 too. I could eat that wine!

What is the blend?

LS: Essentially Touriga Franca and Touriga Nacional with some Tinta Roriz and Tinta Cão. The wine is fermented in 225-litre French oak barrels, 75% of which are new. The grapes all come from vineyards at different elevations at Quinta da Leda and Quinta do Sairrão in the Douro Superior. This means we can ensure the acidity and freshness in the wine, which guarantees its longevity and ability to be enjoyed with food.

And any clues on what the next declarations of Barca Velha or Reserva Especial will be?

LS: If I told you, I’d have to kill you! All I can say is that it is not 2010 or 2012. You’ll have to wait and see.

Barca Velha is about £220 a bottle and Reserva Especial about £120 a bottle, with very limited allocation as only about 30,000 bottles are made. In the UK, contact Berkmann Wine Cellars for details.

Written by Tina Gellie

The Douro’s soils were long seen as one and the same when it came to growing Port grapes, of whatever variety. But thanks to new approaches from the major shippers, the regional subtleties of terroir are now being appreciated. Margaret Rand reports

Quick links:

• Terroir in Port
• Rand’s top 10 terroir-driven Douros

It was hiding in plain sight, of course; it’s just that nobody was looking. The shippers’ eyes were focused on their fermentation lagares and on their blending rooms in Vila Nova de Gaia. The growers’ eyes were focused on the shippers. Underneath their feet was the terroir that made one Port elegant, another muscular, another aromatic. They were aware of it, but they were looking the other way.

If you went to the Douro 20 years ago and asked about terroir, the usual reply was that Port was about blending. Yes, altitude and exposure matter – look at the Port vineyard classification, which took those factors into account nearly 70 years ago, and ranked warmer, low-altitude vineyards above those at 500 metres, and steep ones above those with a walkable incline. But soil? It’s all schist, they said, and it’s all the same. The Port demarcation simply outlines a vast area of schist soil. End of story.

In fact, that was only the beginning of the story. This is about how the shippers discovered terroir; and they did so by becoming growers. Part of that narrative is to do with table wines. Says Paul Symington of Symington Family Estates: ‘Table wines have made the Port trade see itself in a different way. When we were just shippers, it made no sense to say where the grapes were from, because they weren’t our vineyards. It was a profound change when shippers became growers.’

They didn’t become growers to make table wines but to safeguard their supplies of Port grapes, as sales of Late-Bottled Vintage promised to rocket. Then, because they foresaw labour shortages in the Douro, they also wanted to mechanise. To mechanise their terraced vineyards they had to plant them differently, and to do that they had to understand what was in them.

Those terraced vineyards housed dozens of interplanted grape varieties, some identified, some not. Terroir, if anyone had considered the matter, would have been impossibly entangled with grape mix. Every vineyard had a different field blend: how could you possibly say which differences in the wine were down to vines and which to terroir? First you had to evaluate the grape varieties: only then could you consider the terroir.

The work on grape varieties reduced the ideal Port vineyard to just five, planted in blocks. And it raised the average (though not the top) quality of Port. But Port grapes need exuberant colour, tannin, aroma and flavour. A bit of overripeness doesn’t matter for Port: extraction is short and sharp, and a few raisined grapes won’t show in the final blend. For table wine it’s a different matter.

Schist and granite

As we’ve mentioned before, think of Douro terroir and you think of schist. There’s the odd bit of hard blue schist, especially at Foz Côa in the Douro Superior, but usually it’s more friable yellow schist. Says Cristiano van Zeller of Quinta Vale D Maria: ‘Yellow schist has different textures too: you can feel the difference when you’re walking.’ Granite breaks through in places, but granite not only makes wines that are too light and acidic for great Port, but unless it’s weathered and broken down, is impenetrable to vine roots.’

Schist can be impenetrable too, if the strata are horizontal. But horizontal is not a word that springs much to mind in the Douro: the strata are folded and nearly vertical. The roots can force their way between the layers – and with less than 1.5% organic matter in the soil, the roots have to go well down to survive dry summers and freezing winters. When producers started dipping their toes into table wine, the results were mixed. ‘The wines we used to serve were indescribable’, says Symington now of his early efforts. ‘In 1998 and ’89 we started taking it seriously. About 15 years ago I thought we’d have to plant Cabernet Sauvignon here [for table wines]. I saw raisined fruit, and wondered, how can we make something beautiful?

Today’s table wines have silky tannins and aromas of blackberry, juniper and cistus wrapped around a firm black-fruited core, with alcohol in balance and oak pulled back. To make wines like these, from vineyards intended to give maximum colour and tannin, meant first looking at altitude.

António Magalhães, head of viticulture at The Fladgate Partnership (Taylor’s, Croft, Fonseca), says that the Douro vineyards were originally high up, but moved down to lower, hotter places because that’s what the Port shippers wanted: every 100m of altitude means a 0.5ºC difference in temperature. For table wines they started moving back up. ‘Higher vineyards, at 600m, are now valued because they give freshness,’ says Symington. ‘I’ve just planted

two hectares of [white] Viosinho and Arinto at 500m. It’s the first time I’ve ever planted white grapes in my life.’ Dirk Niepoort gets reds and whites from vineyards as high as 800m: ‘And we’re working more and more with granite soils. We haven’t acidified anything since 2009.’

Site specifics

Everybody loves granite now. Quinta do Vale Meão, in the Douro Superior, has lots of it. Says oenologist Xito Olazabal: ‘You can actually make good wines for Port from granite, especially white. But it’s less concentrated. We decided two years ago to make a single-vineyard Touriga Nacional from 100% granite [Monte Meão]: the wines have too much personality to blend with other wines. Granite gives different tannins and structure, more like Dão,’ whose terroir is mainly granite.

Vale Meão has alluvial sand, schist, granite and gravel all rubbing shoulders: it’s very different to the Cima Corgo, where most top Port comes from. It’s also much hotter and drier. Irrigation is necessary, and it’s proving more useful for table wines than for Port. The Cima Corgo, steeper, contoured with terraces, and itself hotter and drier than the Baixa Corgo, the source of most basic Port, now gives both table wines and Port. Which leads to an obvious question: are we seeing a separation of the Douro into different areas for Port and table wine?

The answer is: up to a point. But it’s complicated. Quite often the sites rated less highly for Port are better for table wines, and altitude can be a big part of this. Exposure is also important, and you can hardly get two consecutive metres of vineyard with the same exposure. For Port, you might wantsouth- or west-facing vines; for table wines, often north-facing, or at least with some afternoon shade.

‘When I started,’ says João Alvares Ribeiro of Quinta do Vallado, ‘we had two neighbouring parcels, with slightly different exposures. One gave one of the best wines of the quinta and the other the worst. They were planted at the same time and the grape mix was probably the same. I thought it might be a problem of extraction or something, but it was always the same. It was just a question of exposure. It makes an enormous difference.’

According to viticulturist Pedro Barbosa of Vale Meão, getting away from the river helps a lot. ‘On the one hand the river increases humidity, but on the other, it’s hotter,’ he says. ‘If you go away from the river, and 500m up, you can find sites that are 3ºC to 5ºC cooler. High, south-facing vineyards away from the river are very interesting for white.’

Quintas that make both table wine and Port – like Vesuvio, which is north-facing, with vineyards at 120m-300m – use the highest vines (ripening 10 to 15 days later) for table wine. Dirk Niepoort’s Quinta do Nápoles, opposite Quinta do Crasto, was bought by Dirk’s father for Port; Dirk didn’t think it would amount to much, but it turns out to be very good for table wine, especially reds. The Alijó and Murça areas of the Cima Corgo are proving popular for whites, says Vallado’s João Alvares Ribeiro: ‘We buy 60% of our fruit from cooler areas.’

But it’s not yet possible to draw lines in the map to say, ‘here is Port, here is table wine’. It can only be done vineyard by vineyard, even parcel by parcel. And the more you look, the more you can see.

Written by Margaret Rand

Next page

The Douro’s soils were long seen as one and the same when it came to growing Port grapes, of whatever variety. But thanks to new approaches from the major shippers, the regional subtleties of terroir are now being appreciated. Margaret Rand reports

Terroir in Port

Above: Paul Symington

Quick links:

• Rand’s top 10 terroir-driven Douros

Paul Symington notes the differences between his family company’s Quintas da Cavadinha and do Bomfim. Just 4km apart, Cavadinha has an average annual temperature of 13.8°C, while Bomfim is 15.9°C; Cavadinha has 1,065mm of rain a year, Bomfim has 777mm. Cavadinha faces southwest and is at 240m-380m altitude; Bomfim faces south, and goes up to 180m. Not surprisingly, Bomfim makes a sturdier, denser wine.

David Guimaraens of The Fladgate Partnership (Taylor’s, Croft, Fonseca) makes no table wines but has been obsessed with terroir for years. For him, and it would be hard to find anyone in the Douro who disagreed, the grape varieties, especially in old mixed vineyards, are a key part of Port terroir.

‘Quinta de Terra Feita has a different fruit and tannin profile from the same varietal mix as Quinta de Vargellas: terroir has huge influence. But subtle differences come from the grape mix, which changes from quinta to quinta, and depends on who ran the quinta.’

He said there was the Portuguese school, which favoured lots of varieties – like Quinta do Crasto’s Maria Teresa vineyard, which has 47 varieties in it – and the British school, with fewer. ‘Touriga Franca was the main variety in the Douro Valley, but Alicante was important in the Torto Valley and at Quinta da Roeda; but it’s not planted at Quinta de Vargellas at all. The Crofts planted it, but not the Fladgates.’

Terroir in the Douro as everywhere, includes the hand of the grower.

Next page Previous page

The Douro’s soils were long seen as one and the same when it came to growing Port grapes, of whatever variety. But thanks to new approaches from the major shippers, the regional subtleties of terroir are now being appreciated. Margaret Rand reports

Rand’s 10 terroir-driven Douros

Niepoort, Redoma Branco 2011

18/20pts (93/100pts)

From old mixed vineyards at Quinta da Nápoles and others at 400m-700m. Smoke and minerality, honeysuckle and white fruit; very complex.

Price: £18-£19 Cambridge Wine, Drinkmonger, Theatre of Wine, Uncorked, Vinoteca

Drink 2015-2018

Alc 13%

Quinta do Crasto 2012

17.5/20pts (91/100pts)

Nutty, buttery characters on a complex, balanced, mineral palate. Grown on the north bank of the Douro.

Price: £9.15-£11.50 widely available via UK agent Great Western Wine

Drink 2015-2017

Alc 12%

Prats & Symington, Chryseia 2011

19/20pts (96/100pts)

Comes almost entirely from Quinta do Roriz. Wonderfully spicy, elegant, defined black fruits and very mineral.

Price: £45-£81 Berry Bros & Rudd, Farr, Hedonism, Planet of the Grapes, The Wine Society

Drink 2015-2020

Alc 14%

Quinta do Vallado, Adelaide 2012

18.5/20pts (95/100pts)

From 80-year-old vines on this estate in the Corgo valley. Complex, tight, integrated, elegant and fine. A dense core of black fruit, but not fruit-driven.

Price: N/A UK quintadovallado.com

Drink 2016-2024

Alc 14.5%

Altano, Quinta do Ataide Organic 2011

18/20pts (93/100pts)

From the hot, dry Vilariça Valley, where granite hills surround flat vineyards. Concentrated aromatic fruit, beautifully defined, with a detailed texture.

Price: £9.99 Cambridge Wine Merchants, Davy, Partridges, TJ Wines, Waitrose

Drink 2015-2018

Alc 13.9%

Quinta do Vale Meão, Meandro 2011

18/20pts (93/100pts)

From the Douro Superior. Aromatic with garrigue herbs, juniper and lovely black fruits; structured and supple.

Price: £19-£21.50 Bottle Apostle, Handford Wines, Harvey Nicols, Selfridges, Theatre of Wine

Drink 2015-2018

Alc 14%

F Olazabal e Filhos, Monte Meão 2011

17.5/20pts (91/100pts)

Touriga Nacional from granite soils in the Douro Superior. Very distinct, bright red cherry character – spicy, peppery and fresh.

Price: N/A UK quintadovalemeao.pt

Drink 2015-2020

Alc 14%

Quinta do Vallado, Touriga Nacional 2011

17.5/20pts (91/100pts)

Partly from Vallado itself (fresh, concentrated), partly from the Douro Superior (flowery notes). Powerful, dense and fresh, with notes of violet and balsamic. Very fine.

Price: £22-£25 Direct Wine Imports, Exel, Nicolas, Quaff, Wimbledon Wine Cellar, Winedirect

Drink 2015-2018

Alc 14%

Quinta Vale D Maria, CV 2011

17.5/20pts (91/100pts)

A north-facing vineyard in a closed valley; hot, but not direct sun all day. Big and powerful, but still fresh and balanced sleek black fruits.

Price: £52 (2009) Corney & Barrow

Drink 2015-2020

Alc 15.5%

Quinta Vale D Maria 2011

17/20pts (90/100pts)

41 varieties make for a complex, dense, muscular wine – very harmonious too. This one’s about power, not the fruit.

Price: £30 (2010) Corney & Barrow, Tanners

Drink 2015-2020

Alc 15%

Previous page

The Symington family has bought a 30-hectare Douro estate it has been eyeing for the past century, shrugging off concerns about falling global Port consumption.

Symington has acquired Quinta da Sabordela for an undisclosed fee. It plans to incorporate the vineyard into its neighbouring Quinta do Bomfim estate, increasing its size to 80.5ha.

‘Some people would see a decision to buy additional vineyard in a key Port area as eccentric,’ said Paul Symington, chairman and joint-managing director of Symington Family Estates, citing a decline in worldwide Port consumption over the past several years.

‘But, we see good opportunities for premium quality Port wines now and in the future,’ he told decanter.com.

Quinta da Sabordela, which was used in the 1930s to make Port for Smith Woodhouse, marks a rare opportunity and its elevated vineyards will add more structure and complexity to Dow’s Ports, Symington Family Estates said. It added that it has been trying to buy the estate since 1912.

The latest sales figures from the Port Institute, IVDP, lend weight to Symington’s optimism around the future of premium Port.

Overall bottled Port shipments by volume fell by 3% for the first nine months of 2013, compared to the same period of last year, but this masks a 17% increase in shipments of ‘premium’ Port; albeit to just under 1m nine-litre cases versus 4.74m cases for standard Port.

In value terms, Port shipments rose by 4% over the same period, with premium Port up by almost 37% to €87.3m (US$119.8m). Standard Port dropped by 3% to €148.4m.

Symington is currently building a new winery at Bomfim, to be equipped with six ‘lagares’, the containers typically used for vinifying Port. A visitor centre is also set to open in the spring of 2015.

Written by Chris Mercer

The 2011 Port vintage is set to become the first widely declared year since 2007, with the wines hailed as 'classics', with a character 'rarely seen in the Douro Valley'.

Several producers have moved to declare 2011 in the past few weeks, two years after 2009 was declared by some producers – notably Taylor, Fonseca and Croft – but not by others, including the Symington quartet of Dow, Graham, Warre and Cockburn.

‘From the beginning I think we knew we were in the presence of a great vintage,’ said Luis Sottomayor, winemaker for Sogrape-owned Sandeman, Ferreira and Offley.

‘I have been working in the Douro Valley for more than 23 years, I have made a lot of vintage Port and I have never seen a wine with so much concentration, power and these tannins.

‘It’s a typical, classic vintage … We have the same acidity as in 2007 but a much stronger and more robust wine.’

Taylor, Fonseca and Croft owner The Fladgate Partnership declared 2011 today, St George’s Day, as is the company’s custom, with winemaker David Guimaraens highlighting ‘wines that have elegance as well as depth and stamina’.

He added: ‘The 2011s stand out for the purity of the fruit and the quality of the tannins, which are silky and well integrated, but provide plenty of structure.’

As well as Taylor, Fonseca and Croft, Fladgate also declared Vargellas Vinha Velha, made from selected old vines on the Quinta de Vargellas estate.

The Symingtons – who declared Graham, Dow, Warre and Cockburn – said strong winter rains in late 2010 had played a ‘crucial’ role, resulting in wines with ‘an exceptional depth of colour and concentration, rarely seen in the Douro and with marked minerality from the schistous Douro soil’.

The company has also made two single vineyard wines from the 2011 vintage – Graham’s The Stone Terraces (from selected plots at Quinta dos Malvedos) and Capela do Quinta do Vesuvio, which was launched with the 2007 vintage.

Meanwhile, Fladgate CEO Adrian Bridge said the company would be selling double magnums and imperials of the 2011s in response to growing demand for larger formats.

Written by Richard Woodard

Quinta da Romaneira, one of the Douro Valley's largest estates, covering 400 hectares with 85 hectares planted to vines, has been sold by investment group IDI.

‘A great deal’: Christian Seely in the Romaneira vineyard

The transaction was completed on December 31; the main buyer has not been named but it has been confirmed that AXA Millésimes chief Christian Seely has increased his personal stake, and will continue to run the estate, as he has done since IDI bought the property in 2004. Antonio Agrellos is to continue as consultant winemaker.

‘Christian Seely will remain managing director of AXA Millésimes and Quinta do Noval (the Axa Millésimes Portuguese wine estate) as well as managing director of Quinta da Romaneira, a position he already held under the ownership of IDI,’ Wine Bankers, the Paris investment specialist which oversaw the deal, confirmed.

The buyer is a private, non-Portuguese investor, and Seely himself remains a part-owner, increasing his personal stake. Seely confirmed that AXA Millésimes is not the purchaser.

The other shareholders have now sold along with IDI. The total sale price has not been released.

IDI invested €11.8m in the estate, renovating it and building a hotel which was voted in the world’s top 20 vineyard hotels by the Times newspaper in 2010. Over the past two years, in-bottle sales have tripled.

Single quinta ports from Romaneira were auctioned by Christie’s in 1872, the first recorded ports of this kind to be sold at auction. Today, Quinta da Romaneira produces award-winning AOC Douro and Port wines.

‘It has been a good deal for all the original investors, and a great deal for Romaneira,’ Seely told Decanter.com. ‘I am delighted to be associated for the long term with my new partner, and to be able to develop the huge potential of Romaneira in the years to come.’

Written by Jane Anson in Bordeaux

Port producers in the Douro Valley expect yields to be down this year after being hit by hail, and extreme heat, in the past two months.

Quinta do Vale de Malhadas in the Douro Superior

After an unusually hot May and a cool early June, temperatures soared into the low 40s Celsius during the last weekend of the month, inflicting the worst sunburn in living memory on the vineyards.

Writing in his Graham’s Port blog, Symington Family Estates viticulturist Miles Edlmann said the heat particularly affected the Vilariça Valley, which had also been damaged by hail earlier in the month.

The sun’s effects were worst in the Douro Superior, on south-west-facing vineyards and among plantings of Tinta Barroca, he added.

‘Parcelas (vineyard plots) which managed to unite the unhappy conjunction of variety, sub-region and exposition lost the entire crop,’ said Edlmann.

‘Elsewhere, more vulnerable berries were killed off, leaving the rest of the bunch intact. Not even the oldest caseiros can remember having seen sunburn quite like it.’

Other varieties impacted by the extreme heat include the thin-skinned Sousão and Touriga Francesa, which usually stands up better to high temperatures.

The quality of the 2011 crop should be unaffected, said Edlmann, but yields will be ‘down across the region’ as a result.

Written by Richard Woodard