Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
This vivacious Vinhão from Vasco Croft’s pioneering biodynamic estate captures the variety’s wild fruit profile and tempers (but without taming) its high tannin and acid profile. Wonderfully pure sour wild cherry, bilberry and sloe fruit and notes of cherrystone and inky violets. Refined, touch sooty tannins and pingy, fresh acidity make for a long, lively finish. Macerated and foot-trodden in lagares, then fermented and lees-aged in stainless steel vats.
Beyond the usual suspects, there are hundreds of red grape varieties grown throughout the world. Some are indigenous specialties capable of producing excellent single varietal wines, while others are better suited for use as blending grapes. Each has its own distinct viticultural characteristics, as well as aroma and flavor profiles, offering much to be discovered by the curious wine lover. In particular, Portugal and Italy are known for having a multitude of unique varieties but they can really be found in any region.
A cheerful, translucid, lemon-yellow and slightly pétillant white wine, Vinho Verde literally means ‘green wine’ and is named after the northwest Portugese region from which it originates. The ‘green’ in the name refers to the youthful state in which the wines are customarily released and consumed, not the color of the wine.
It is typically a blend of various percentages of Alvarinho, Loureiro, Trajadura, and Pedernã (Arinto). Following initial alcoholic fermentation, a natural, secondary malolactic conversion in cask produces carbon dioxide, giving Vinho Verde its charmingly light sparkle.