Budget Wine: Vale Do Bomfim Red Blend Douro, Portugal 2013

In the budget wine category, Portugal is producing some of the best value on the market. This is one example.

Rich, ripe blackberry with fresh wood notes and hints of damp leaves accompany the characteristic savory herbal aromas that give Douro wines their distinctiveness. Good complexity at this price.

Concentrated forward fruit is enlivened by stealth salami flavors that foretell thick, hefty tannins on the medium length finish. This is a robust wine, solidly built, that maintains a rugged aspect despite having the harsh edges sanded down. Hovering between rustic and polished, this indeterminacy is part of what makes the dry wines from the Douro interesting.

Produced by the Symington family with grapes grown in vineyards that supply Dow with its better known Port wines, the blend for this wine changes each year. The 2013 is 40% Tinta Barroca, 30% Touriga Franca, 20% Touriga Nacional, 10% Tinta Roriz.

I can’t think of a better value wine.

Nobody does polished rustic like Bonny Raitt “Used to Rule the World”

Score: 89

Price: $11

Alc: 14%