April 08, 2020
From North to South, Portugal is a little surprise for wine lovers. Red, white, rosé, sweeter or sour, our wines are a unique and wonderful luxury on our tables. Check this Wine Route that we’ve prepared just for you and next dinner remember to serve a nice bottle of our finest wine.
One of the most famous in Portugal, our sparkling Green Wine, is not exactly green in colour but it’s young, served fresh and a good ally for a fish dish or something cooler in summer. This kind of wine is rapidly bottled to be immediately sold and served. As it is young, and it doesn’t take ages to mature – like other wines – the green wine is lower in alcohol. Some of our brands are Gazela, Alvarinho, Monção, and Muralhas.
Sweet, perfect as a gift and ideal to make a conversation even more delicious, our Port Wine is our pop star and its success is evident. Douro Valley, the oldest demarcated wine region in the world, is the home of this best-seller. You can choose from the different flavours and aromas this wine has available: raspberry, blackberry, caramel, cinnamon or chocolate. This wine takes years (more than 30) to reach its maturity and it should be served below room temperature. Try to serve a sweet bottle of this wine with a cheese you like, desserts or a dark chocolate. How fancy is this? Some of the examples are: Ferreira, Kopke and Noval Vintage.
And here you can also try the Douro Wines. The region is normally connected with Port Wine Production, but it also produces delicious “table wines”. These nectars have the highest local wine classification in DOC (Demoninação de Origem Controlada, meaning “Controlled Denomination of Origin”).
These wines are created at a very different climate because it is far from the rains from the ocean and strong winds. The high altitude makes this wine more robust and interesting because it gives the wine a certain acidity and you can find them in both red and white. Dão wines, which are born in granitic regions, age quite well and are sold in various textures: light, fresh or barrel-fermented. Some of these wines are Bical, Verdelho, and the famous Encruzado.
The land of leitão (roasted suckling pig) and other intense and explosive flavours, the Bairrada wine comes from the flat regions of dense forests. Bairrada Clássico is well known at a typical Portuguese table. A wine like this can age for more than 10 years and you have either white or red. The white wine tends to be more flowery-aromatic and it’s delicious to drink it in spring and in summer. Some of these wines are: Arinto, Bical, Baga, Touriga Nacional and Merlot.
Both Setúbal and Tróia are great peninsulas that have become highly important when it comes to wine making. The climate is possibly one of the best: mild, hot, dry summers and rainy winters. These wines also age quite well. Moscatel (Muscat) is a sweet and intense wine in Portugal because we use it as a dessert or as a digestive. Castelão (also known as Periquita) is another good fruit-flavoured wine from Setúbal. The white versions are Arinto, Moscatel de Setúbal and Fernão Pires.
Every Portuguese likes to have a bottle of this wine at home to serve in any occasion. In Alentejo the soil is different because it is drier and reddish, so it’s more difficult to produce the white wine but not impossible. Some of the red wines are Borba, Redondo and Reguengos and they are able to turn our tables into a harmonious meal. Antão Vaz is probably the most famous wine, also fruit-flavoured and with an ideal acidity. Some other good wines from this region are Cortes de Cima, Encostas do Enxoé, Pêra Manca and José de Sousa.
Not only the good weather or the best beaches make Algarve an inviting place, but so do the wines. With a Mediterranean, fresher and humid weather, the wines produced are born in favorable conditions. The soils also vary from sandy to sandstone or even limestone or shallow over rock. Some of the examples are Arinto, Malvasia Fina, Aragonez, Chardonnay, and Touriga Nacional.
Our island has also got an excellent temperature, which has been making the vineyards last forever. Mountainous landscapes and fertile soil create an acid wine, resulting from the natural acidity of the grapes. Some of the ‘noble’ varieties include the white wines of Sercial, Verdelho and Terrantez. Tinta Negra is dry and the most extensively produced wine in Madeira and they make a fine red wine. It is ideal to match with a prosciutto-wrapped melon or mature cheese.
If you’d like to have this experience in loco, join our Portugal Wine Tour to intensively live and try the different tastes. This wine route will take you to the most important wine regions of Portugal and also to those places, wineries and cellars where wine is produced.
Portuguese wines are versatile, fine and rich and they can transform a normal meal into something more vigorous and interesting!
Joana is Portuguese and she loves to share her passion about travelling.
@Joana Cabo Read more posts written by Joana Cabo
