V. Puro Bairrada Red Doravante – Organic

Baga and Touriga Nacional are grown in the Bairrada, co-fermented, and aged in 3000-liter oak vats for 12 months. These two grapes do a beautiful dance together presenting red fruits, dark fruits, lilacs, and peppery earth notes on the nose.  The palate is equally complex with tobacco, leather, chocolate-covered cherries, rosewater, and a Cab Franc-like herbaceousness.  New flavors emerge with every new sip. Think of Doravante as an old-school claret, with lighter red fruit flavor and fresh pencil shaving mineral character. The blend is Baga and the better-known Touriga Nacional, fresh and elegant and long.

90 points, Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate:  “The 2016 Doravante red is a roughly equal blend of Baga and Touriga Nacional aged in used 3,000-liter oak vats for 12 months. It comes in at 12.5% alcohol. The winemaker said this still has too much Touriga and doesn’t make him feel “Bairrada” as much as he would like. Typicity is one issue, but as a wine, it is very good, and perhaps it is better than the Aliás this issue. We’ll see how they both develop, but for today, I’d take this. Nicely balanced and concentrated, for Bairrada at least, this is also elegant and fresh. It will be approachable young. There is no track record for aging, but the balance and freshness should preserve it for at least a decade, maybe more.”

Red and violet color, reveals notes of cherry, pepper, and tobacco. In the mouth, look for an herbal freshness, with very fine tannins and a long aftertaste. This wine is born from a mixed vineyard where Baga cohabitates with Touriga Nacional.  The grapes were harvested together, co-fermented in large oak vats where the wine also aged.

Nuno Mira do Ó is the winemaker at Doravente.  His wines exist to shine a light on the extraordinary revolution in winemaking happening in Bairrada, a hilly region buffeted by the cooler, wetter weather coming off the Atlantic ocean. In the past, it was relegated to producing cheap wines for the domestic market but a collection of quality-minded producers have in recent years elevated Bairrada wines to ever-greater heights – with better viticulture and sensitive winemaking, in particular with the native Baga grape.

Nuno’s philosophy is in keeping with this. In his own words, his wines are “a pursuit for balance with the utmost respect for nature”.