Winemaker Notes
Deep purple in colour, this wine shows intense aromas of wild berry fruit in harmony with delicate notes of spice. Excellent volume on the palate, with a serious structure composed of fine-textured, lingering tannins. The finish is fresh and persistent. This is an enveloping wine that perfectly mirrors the typicity of the Touriga Franca grape variety.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Attractive blue-fruited character here with spices and blue flowers. Hints of iron, too. Tannins are tightly packed, but very fine and lingering. Medium to full body. It’s concentrated and fresh at the same time, with stony minerality at the end. So much verve. They only make this bottling in top years. Drink or hold.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2019 Touriga Franca was aged for 18 months in 90% new French oak and comes in at 14.7% alcohol. It is not common to see this grape as a monovarietal, but there are some. Crasto is getting it right and helping to lead the way. This opens softly, leaning to sensuality, but it expands in the glass, shows off its fine structure and becomes steadily more interesting. It is a lot less sensual at that point but a lot more powerful. The finish is long and gripping. Since the tannins are moderately ripe, this can be drunk now, but this has a real backbone. Giving it a few years to age would be a great idea. It is still closed and a little too aggressive. Some cellaring will let it come together and become more harmonious. It's hard pressed to match the aromatic glory of its Touriga Nacional sibling, but it certainly has virtues of its own. It does seem very ripe this year. Hopefully, it holds its balance as it ages.
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
The 2019 Quinta do Crasto Touriga Franca is a high-powered red wine with excellent balance and style. This wine displays aromas and flavors of savory spices, licorice, and oak. Enjoy it with an old-fashioned, slow-cooked beef stew. (Tasted: March 24, 2025, San Francisco, CA)
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Wine Spectator
A sleek, fragrant red, with brambly wild herbs, graphite and cedar accenting flavors of pureed black raspberry, plum skin, licorice and mineral. Fresh and focused, with sculpted tannins emerging on the chewy finish. Drink now through 2034. 790 cases made, 80 cases imported.
Nestled on a privileged location in the Douro, Quinta do Crasto is one of the oldest winemaking estates in the region – the name ‘Crasto’ is derived from the Latin word ‘castrum’, which means ‘Roman fort’. The first known references to Quinta do Crasto can be traced back to 1615, long before the Douro became the world’s first Demarcated Wine Region in 1756. In the early 1900s, Quinta do Crasto was purchased by Constantino de Almeida, the founder of the famous Constantino Port house. Today, his granddaughter, Leonor Roquette, and her husband Jorge Roquette own and manage the estate, together with their sons, Miguel and Tomás. The Roquette family has invested tremendous time, attention, and resources to rebuild and expand the vineyards and facilities to produce top quality Port and Douro table wines. Vineyard mapping, DNA-matched replanting, a new state-of-the-art wine cellar and centuries of tradition mean that no detail in the winemaking and vineyard management is overlooked.
Quinta do Crasto produces different styles of port and table wines each year. Together with their winemakers and their entire team, they seek to produce year after year wines that display the unique and beautiful characteristics of the Douro, through a tireless devotion to tradition, integrity and excellence.
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.
The home of Port—perhaps the most internationally acclaimed beverage—the Douro region of Portugal is one of the world’s oldest delimited wine regions, established in 1756. The vineyards of the Douro, set on the slopes surrounding the Douro River (known as the Duero in Spain), are incredibly steep, necessitating the use of terracing and thus, manual vineyard management as well as harvesting. The Douro's best sites, rare outcroppings of Cambrian schist, are reserved for vineyards that yield high quality Port.
While more than 100 indigenous varieties are approved for wine production in the Douro, there are five primary grapes that make up most Port and the region's excellent, though less known, red table wines. Touriga Nacional is the finest of these, prized for its deep color, tannins and floral aromatics. Tinta Roriz (Spain's Tempranillo) adds bright acidity and red fruit flavors. Touriga Franca shows great persistence of fruit and Tinta Barroca helps round out the blend with its supple texture. Tinta Cão, a fine but low-yielding variety, is now rarely planted but still highly valued for its ability to produce excellent, complex wines.
White wines, generally crisp, mineral-driven blends of Arinto, Viosinho, Gouveio, Malvasia Fina and an assortment of other rare but local varieties, are produced in small quantities but worth noting.
With hot summers and cool, wet winters, the Duoro has a maritime climate.