Tag Archives: Portuguese Wine

Budget Wine Review: Mural Reserva Red Wine Douro 2011

10 Friday Mar 2017

Posted by in Budget Wines, Wine Reviews

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muralThe land best known for its Port makes red wine as rugged as the slopes on which their vineyards sit. They typically deliver big flavors and firm structure at a modest price but they aren’t for the “soft and smooth” crowd. Most are blends dominated by the robustly tannic Touriga Nacional. But this wine is a bit different being a blend of 40% Touriga Franca, 40% Tinta Roriz (known as Tempranillo in Spain) and only 20% Touriga Nacional. It’s still well structured but the tannins have softened, especially now that it’s 6 years from its vintage date and it doesn’t quite have the midpalate heft and concentration of many Portuguese reds.

It is nevertheless a good value  as it delivers a seriously strange evolution.

The nose of roasted meat, earth, and saddle leather surrounding a core of dark berry is stunning. But in the mouth the full, structured fruit flattens out midpalate acquiring a metallic tone and a bit of severity, with powdery tannins lingering as the textured, prickly finish slowly fades in a cloud of dust. This is an odd trajectory starting round and full but hollowing out and then becoming exceedingly long and granular.

It’s good, cheap and weird. Points for originality.

25% of the wine saw used French oak for 9 months.

Works well with some dirty synth layered over a repetitive pulsing beat.

Score: 88

Price: $10

Alc: 14%

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

28 Friday Aug 2015

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vale do bomfimIn 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%

Wine Review: Blandy’s Madeira Bual 5 year

22 Monday Dec 2014

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Madeira, the Portuguese archipelago in the North Atlantic,  gets the prize for creating the most ironic wine style. Most wine is destroyed when exposed to oxygen or heat. Madeira is made by exposing wine to oxygen and heat.

Bual grapes are harvested before they develop much sugar and while they still have plenty of acidity. After crushing, fermentation is induced but is stopped by the addition of grape spirits before fermentation is complete, boosting both the alcohol level and the sweetness. Then the process gets interesting. The wine is stored in large wooden casks in a room heated to 80-100 degrees Fahrenheit for 6 months to a year, which gently cooks the wine. The wine is then exposed to oxygen and gradually reduced temperatures until ready to bottle in 5 years, allowing evaporation to concentrate the wine. (This is Blandy’s method for 5 year Bual. Other producers and other styles of Madeira use methods of vinification that differ slightly from this one)

Because the wine has been thoroughly cooked and oxidized it Is virtually indestructible—an open bottle can be kept for years with no adverse effects.

What’s the result of this heat and oxidation?

The wine has a lovely gold color with orange highlights. The nose is packed with appealing aromas of golden raisin, apricot, and burnt orange peel against a background of caramel and almond. Despite considerable sweetness, it treads lightly on the palate. Good Madeira should not lay in the mouth like syrup but should show considerable life and finesse, as this 5-year does. And the finish is gloriously long with bristling acidity providing tart counterpoint to the more dominant dulcet flavors.

Quality Madeira comes in four styles from dry to sweet: Sercial, Verdelho, Bual, and Malmsey. The Bual is sweet but less so than the Malmsey; for me it hits my “sweet spot”.

Balanced and elegant, this is a wonderful aperitif that cries out for a good Stilton cheese as accompaniment. 5 years of aging only begins to express the depth of Madeira. But this is a great introduction at a good price.

Style: Sweet but balanced with acidity

Score: 90

Alc:19%

Price: $25

A wine cooked and exposed to the elements, beaten and unsheltered, it leads a life of sorrow, yet it expresses the tang of resistance, spirit and vivacity despite travail. Just like that other magnificent product of Portuguese culture—Fado, a music full of world-weariness but nevertheless life affirming. Who better to accompany a good bottle of Madeira that the incomparable Maritza.