Winemaker Notes
Excellent color, very vivid. Floral aromas combined with red fruits and wild. Fills the mouth with intense notes of fruit, showing an end of prolonged mouth very fresh and complex.
Blend: 45% Touriga Nacional, 30% Touriga Franca, 20% Tinta Roriz, 3% Tinta Barroca & 2% Alicante Bouschet
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
This wine is named after the majestic oxbow bend taken by the Douro river around the Meão estate. It is richly structured and with no concessions to immediate softness. It needs to age to bring its black fruits into full harmony with the structure.
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Wine Spectator
Nicely textured, with smooth tannins, this elegant, full-bodied red is packed with dark cherry, violet, red plum and anise notes that are harmonious and well-integrated. Details of mocha, wild herb and spice cascade onto the finish. Touriga Nacional, Touriga Franca, Tinta Roriz, Tinta Barroca and Alicante Bouschet.
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James Suckling
This has a floral nose with aromas of violets, ripe blue fruit, spices and wild herbs. It’s full-bodied with creamy and chewy tannins. Plush and juicy with a fruity core and a tannic finish. A blend of 45% touriga nacional, 30% touriga franca, 20% tinta roriz, 3% tinta barroca and 2% alicante bouschet. Drink from 2023.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2018 Meandro do Vale Meão is a blend of 45% Touriga Nacional, 30% Touriga Franca, 20% Tinta Roriz and dollops of Tinta Barroca and Alicante Bouschet for the rest, all aged for 14 months in used French oak. It comes in at 14.1% alcohol. This is often a can't-miss bargain in Douro, and that seems true again this year. Textured with velvet, concentrated and able to coat the palate, it does everything well. It is not a star in terms of structure—the tannins are ripe and you can drink it now—but everything else works great. It should still hold well for the rest of the decade, more or less. It did thin a bit with extended aeration, but nothing went seriously awry.
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Wine & Spirits
Meandro is Vale Meão’s the second wine, mostly touriga nacional, touriga franca and tinta roriz. Francisco Olazabal and his team foot tread each variety for four hours in granite lagars before fermenting the wines in small vats, then aging them in used French oak barrels. Time in oak enriches the dark plum and currant flavors of the fruit, adding some black walnut tones. The fruit feels cool and spicy, brisk and bright, suggesting the oak, which blunts the finish for now, will meld with bottle age.
With hundreds of red grape varieties to choose from, winemakers have the freedom to create a virtually endless assortment of blended red wines. In many European regions, strict laws are in place determining the set of varieties that may be used, but in the New World, experimentation is permitted and encouraged resulting in a wide variety of red wine styles. Blending can be utilized to enhance balance or create complexity, lending different layers of flavors and aromas. For example, a red wine blend variety that creates a fruity and full-bodied wine would do well combined with one that is naturally high in acidity and tannins. Sometimes small amounts of a particular variety are added to boost color or aromatics. Blending can take place before or after fermentation, with the latter, more popular option giving more control to the winemaker over the final qualities of the wine.
How to Serve Red Wine
A common piece of advice is to serve red wine at “room temperature,” but this suggestion is imprecise. After all, room temperature in January is likely to be quite different than in August, even considering the possible effect of central heating and air conditioning systems. The proper temperature to aim for is 55° F to 60° F for lighter-bodied reds and 60° F to 65° F for fuller-bodied wines.
How Long Does Red Wine Last?
Once opened and re-corked, a bottle stored in a cool, dark environment (like your fridge) will stay fresh and nicely drinkable for a day or two. There are products available that can extend that period by a couple of days. As for unopened bottles, optimal storage means keeping them on their sides in a moderately humid environment at about 57° F. Red wines stored in this manner will stay good – and possibly improve – for anywhere from one year to multiple decades. Assessing how long to hold on to a bottle is a complicated science. If you are planning long-term storage of your reds, seek the advice of a wine professional.
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.