Spring 2023 Wine Club
The six club wines are detailed below and for the first time in our Wine Club history, a sparkling wine is coming your way! We will continue to explore wines from the Douro Valley, Bairrada, Vinho Verde, and Dão wine regions.
2019 Quinta do Javali Stone Vineyard Tinto
Quinta do Javali is becoming a familiar name for Wine Club Members and diners of Michelin Star restaurants alike. Two of their reds wines have been featured here before, and both of their top red wines now grace the lists of exclusive restaurants in New York and California. Club Members just enjoyed the delicious port from the Quinta in my last shipment to you.
Quinta do Javali has its roots in traditional Douro port and table wines, and is a family-owned business spanning 18 hectares (44 acres) in the heart of the Douro Valley. The farm has a heritage of winemaking dating back to the 17th century and has been in the Mendes family since 1982. Against this backdrop, António Mendes has created one of the more forward thinking wine projects happening in Portugal today. He’s taken a relatively small part of the land and over the past few years converted it to a fully certified organic and biodynamic vineyard… an unheard of practice in Douro!
The vineyards are guided by slabs of slate, plowed by horse, and tilled by wild pigs (Javali in Portuguese). Work in the vineyards is guided by the celestial cadence of Steiner’s calendar and monitored by meteorological stations installed throughout the property. This is next level, heroic viticulture and a monstrous understatement to say that António is years ahead of his port producing contemporaries with his work at Javali.
Further investments in the winery allow for varietals and plots to be vinified separately. Decisions are rooted in the conviction of showing terroir, expressing the land as purely as possible, and driving the Douro’s reputation for authentic table wines forward.
The Stone Vineyard for which the wine is named, is a small, high-elevation parcel within the larger Clos Fonte do Santo vineyard. This is an old vine field blend of 30-plus grapes. They are all grown, hand harvested, and vinified together. After harvest the grapes ferment naturally and spontaneously together in concrete tanks with partial whole cluster. The juice is pressed and then aged in the same concrete tanks in which it was fermented. The wine is not stabilized by cold and only goes through a light filtration before bottling. It is ruby red in color with a strong fruit profile on the nose (strawberries, blackberries, and red plums). The positioning of the vineyard allows for a longer maturation cycle of the grapes, which gives the wine a sense of more matured red fruits. The structure of the wine is incredibly balanced. The minerality conferred by the terroir of Fonte do Santo allows for an elegant tasting experience.
2019 Textura da Estrela Tinto
Textura is the Portuguese word for “texture” and Wine Club Members have been on a tour-de-force of Textura wines with me. There’s a reason - this place and the people making the decisions are on a mission to show the wine world what it means to make quality wines in Portugal. Thanks to a successful earlier career as a hedge fund manager, the winery’s founder and owner, Marcelo Araujo is pouring significant resources into the vineyards, winery, and his team. They are bringing forth incredible wines of distinction from the Dão wine region.
Marcelo chose the Dão region because of its attractive combination of climate and geographic features offering optimal grape growing conditions. Nestled against Portugal’s tallest inland mountain region, the Serra da Estrela, the Dão is quickly becoming a magnet for some of Portugal’s best winemakers as the prime location for showcasing several of the country’s prominent varietals. With every vintage, Marcelo and his team are gaining a better understanding of their land and through experiments in the winery to separately vinify parcels and varietals, they are showing terroir and the sense of place.
Winemaking is overseen by Mariana Salvador with Luis Seabra consulting. Luis is widely considered one of Portugal’s most influential viticulturists and winemakers. The approach is minimalism and ensuring the wines we enjoy are not manipulated but reflect what the grapes and Mother Nature intended. Textura da Estrela red 2019 comes from 3 different vineyard blocks, all of them at Vila Nova de Tazem (Serra da Estrela sub region). It is a blend from old vines field blend (30%), Touriga Nacional (25%), Alfrocheiro (25%) and Jaen (20%). Vineyards from 25-60 years old planted in granite soils are farmed organically without herbicides or synthetic chemicals. The wine was fermented with wild yeasts in used French oak vats with 35% whole bunch followed by a 30 days cuvaison. It has aged for 15 months in the same vats and barrels and naturally stabilized. It is a wine with great refinement and pine tree freshness. It has a mineral and earthy character, light pepper, red cherries and dry leaves flavors. It shows velvety and textured tannins with a hint of stem. Long, dry and salty finish. This has aging potential for an even more elegant experience.
2018 V Puro Aliás Tinto
V Puro is Bairrada wine region passion project of two lifelong friends, Nuno Mira do Ó and João Soares. You received a bottle of their Doravante Tinto, which is a 50/50 blend of Baga and Touriga Nacional. The Aliás wine features 100% Baga. The duo’s focus with V Puro (puro being the Portuguese word for pure) is to work exclusively with Portugal’s native varietals and showcase their natural elegance and freshness through old vines. Checking out Bairrada on the wine map shows it immediately next to the Atlantic Ocean, an important feature in the climate of the region. Summer brings hot days but cool, sometimes cold nights and the big temperature swings combined with the clay soils make the Bairrada an exciting region for artisan winemakers like Nuno.
Whereas the Winter 2023 wine, Doravante, featured fruit from his Doravante vineyards, the 2018 Aliás Tinto takes us to an adjacent parcel of even older vines. This image shows the vineyard positioning. The wine is 100% Baga and from a specific parcel of the Aliás vineyard that is entirely 100+ year old vines… a rare and special treat! Given the micro sized parcel of vines and the small yield of old vines, there is precious little of this annually - only 2,000 bottles in the 2018 vintage!
2018 was a fairly cold and humid year overall with a rainy spring and a much colder than usual early summer. Ripening was very slow and the wines express that in wonderful freshness. These grapes where picked in mid September and the result is a complex wine full of fresh and spicy character. Nuno and João used partial stems in fermenting the 2018 in an open lagar, a traditional vessel in Portugal which is a large stone tank. Fermenation finished in used French oak barrels where it aged for 12 months before bottling in September 2019.
The wine has a crystalline appearance and a lovely ruby red color. It reveals the aromas of iodine and limestone minerality as well as cherry notes and a vegetable, flowery fragrance. In the mouth it is very fresh, with silky tannins, salty sensations (remember the proximity to the Atlantic Ocean), spicy notes and an amazing acidity that transports the wine through a long finish. This wine can be enjoyed now but also has tremendous, multi-decade aging potential.
2017 Muxagat Vinhas Velhas
Club Members and wine drinkers can’t get enough Muxagat! Like Textura, Muxagat produces a variety of cuvées and I have imported some to the United States for broader distribution while others, like Vinhas Velhas, remain for a select few. Muxagat (pronounced Moo-sha-got) is located in the tiny village of Mêda almost three hours drive from Porto at the eastern end of the Douro Valley. The Douro is divided into three regions and you can refer to this wine map for orientation. The Baixo Corgo is the western-most part of the Douro, closest to Porto and the influences of the Atlantic Ocean. Cima Corgo is the middle section. The most rugged, least developed region is the Douro Superior with parts of it closer to Spain than to Porto and the coast. The region is sought after for its high elevation vineyards, extremes in diurnal versus nocturnal temperature, and situational position to ripen grapes and produce beautiful wines. Muxagat has been making wines here since 2002.
Muxagat is a family-owned property, with Susana Lopes at the helm and she has helped drive awareness of artisan, terroir-focused Douro Valley wines forward through her work. Several of the wines are now only available on allocation, though luckily, I’ll always be able to secure the wines of my choice for our Wine Club. Winemaking is overseen by the legendary, Luis Seabra, widely regarded as the best winemaker in the Douro and one of the most influential wine professionals in Portugal.
The Muxagat wines are a prime reason I began importing wines, and Susana was the first to agree to work with for the United States market. The 2017 Vinhas Velhas, Portuguese for “old vines”, comes from the oldest plot planted in the vineyard. The plot is a field blend, meaning a mix of various grapes and is customary for some older vineyards in the Douro Valley. As with all Muxagat wines, the farming practices are sustainable and focus on the natural, long-term health of the land and vines. The grapes are harvested by hand and sorted immediately upon arrival at the winery. 20% of the stems were used in the open lagar fermentation. Yes, think old school foot stomping… that is how this wine is fermented! The vinified juice is then transferred to used French oak barrels to age for 20 months. The winey has a dark rudy color, spicy with notes of black pepper and black fruits such as plum with a slight smokiness. In the mouth it is intense with good concentration of tannins that give it firmness and freshness. I love this wine with steak, grilled meats, backyard BBQs, or big sauces.
Vadio Sparkling NV Solera
Vadio is a family-owned and run project in the Bairrada region founded in 2005 by husband and wife team, Luís Patrão and Eduarda Dias. We’ve enjoyed two of Vadio’s red, 100% Baga wines in past Wine Club shipments. This time we see something unique, a first for the Wine Club… a sparkling wine from Portugal! While the French garner all the headlines for Champagne, sparkling wine is made in many wine-producing countries and has a long history in Portugal. Some of the best come from the clay and limestone soils of Bairrada. And, the hand of Luís Patrão brings forth my favorites from Portugal. Luís is a renowned winemaker that helped bring organic farming and minimal intervention techniques to one of Portugal’s largest wine producers before striking out on his own.
Luís and Eduarda, along with extended family members, farm 7.5 hectares (18.5 acres) across 4 vineyards in the Bairrada along the Atlantic Ocean. The winery is based in the small village of Poutena. They practice organic farming to ensure the health of their land and vines and the sustainability of the region’s biodiversity. The Atlantic Ocean’s climate influences combined with clay and limestone soils and native varietals contribute to the uniqueness of Vadio’s wines. When I first tasted their wines and got to know the depth and care that Luís takes in the vineyards and cellar, I knew I had to bring it to the United States.
This sparkling wine is NV, or non-vintage, because it has fermented wine from multiple vintages in it. Luís uses a solera system for this wine, which layers a large number of vintages into a single, huge vessel to create a sparkling wine of incredible depth and nuanced feel. This particular solera has wine dating back to the 2007 vintage! Farming at Vadio is certified organic, and Luís is an incredible viticulturist. He goes as far as to create his own composts for use in his vineyards. The grapes used in this wine are Bical, Baga, and Cercial rooted in sandy soils above limestone bedrock. Each new vintage goes through alcoholic fermentation in a combination of used oak barrels and stainless steel vats. After 18 months of aging the vintage can then be blended into the existing solera system with past vintages creating a living memory of many years in a single bottle. This sparking wine is one of the finest I have had outside of the Champagne region of France and bests numerous offerings from that area. It has a fine, complex set of aromas with notes of bakery and hazelnuts. It is both intense and crispy in the mouth, with persistent acidity. Pop… literally, and pour!
Pro tip on opening a bottle of sparkling wine: Do not stand the bottle up and twist the cork out rapidly. Instead, remove the foil top to expose the wire cage. Use the wire clasp to loosen the cage but do not remove it entirely. Hold the bottle at a 45-degree angle with one hand firmly clasped on the cage and cork to prevent it from flying off. Slowly turn the punt (bottom) of the bottle back and forth. Keep a forceful hand on the cage and cork and keep the back and forth motion from the bottom of the bottle going until the cork is released. You should feel pressure coming out of the bottle as this process continues. Contrary to the popularly heard loud “pop”, the actual aim of a professionally opened bottle of sparkling wine is to achieve no sound at all. Loud pops in restaurants or public places aren’t ideal… but then again, neither is wasting a bunch of wine with a poor technique. Practice makes perfect, so I recommend ordering a lot of sparkling wine!
2021 Quinta de Santiago Pisco Alvarinho & Loureiro
Alvarinho is back… along with a sidekick in the the bottle, Loureiro! Wine Club Members have had Alvarinho, one of the greatest grape varietals, in my opinion, several times. And, you’ve had the native grape, Loureiro from Santiago in the “Cisma” wine. The Pisco vineyard at Quinta de Santiago is planted with both of these native varietals and the resulting wine shows the lovely characteristics of both. My favorite producer of Alvarinho is Quinta de Santiago. Quinta de Santiago is a family-owned farm spanning 7.5 hectares (18.5 acres) along the banks of the Minho River in the Monção and Melgaço sub-region of Vinho Verde. It has been in the Santiago family since 1899. The farm sold all types of native fruits, vegetables, and agricultural products locally. The grapes from the Quinta were sold to the local cooperative. Fast forward to 2009 when then owner, Grandma Mariazinha Santiago (aged 86), her children, and grandchildren, understood the unique quality of their vines and terroir that a boutique winery was born.
Joana Santiago is now at the head of the family’s winery and is , a self-described “authentic Minho woman” - driven to honor her family’s heritage. It is from a multi-generation devotion to the family’s land and vineyards that the special qualities of Quinta de Santiago are rooted. Joana is a firebrand and we have become great friends through our work together. She is thoughtful and forward thinking, while at the same time honoring her past.
For wine lovers of Burgundy and other classic, old world wine regions, we are used to thinking about specific vineyards and seeking the nuances of site-specific wines. The notion of terroir was born in the Burgundy region of France. The idea of single vineyard bottling in the Vinho Verde region of Portugal isn’t common at all, even if the single varietal is Alvarinho or the widely planted, Loureiro. Joana Santiago has been experimenting with single vineyard wines for years, and understands that seemingly small, nuanced differences in elevation, soil composition, vineyard exposition, drainage, and other elements have a profound impact of the outcome of the wines from her small farm. She is far ahead of her peers in thinking this was in this part of Portugal.
Vinha do Pisco (wine of Pisco) is named after the Pisco vineyard, a small parcel on their farm. The wine is a blend of Alvarinho and Loureiro from this vineyard though the grapes mature at different stages and are harvested and vinified separately as a result. Both grape varietals were gently pressed after harvest with a small amount of resulting skin contact for 12 hours. The juice fermented in stainless steel tank and then spent an additional 5 months on the lees in the tank before it was blended. This is about 60% Loureiro and 40% Alvarinho, given the characteristics of Alvarinho dominate in a blend. The wine has a citrine appearance with vegetal, bay leaf, white flower, pear, and lemon tree aromas. In the mouth I experience great freshness, good texture and persistent aromatic intensity. I’d pair this with a starter course, seafood, salads, or white meat. Perfect for the warm weather ahead!