Winemaker Notes
With a dark crimson color, this Touriga Nacional boasts great concentration and aromas of red fruit and violets, with balsamic oak notes. The taste is sweet, round and mature, with silky tannins. Red fruit and oak notes following through from the nose and into the fresh, long lasting finish.
"Touriga on its own can seem more like a color than a flavor. This wine leaves a swarth of violet in its wake, both a floral perfume and a brush stroke in purple. The flavors are primary and undeveloped, waiting to form into some akin to wild raspberry and fraises des bois before they constrict at the end. For now, the pleasure is all in the velvet texture. Super touriga, this has a long life ahead." "Very Highly Recommended", - Wine & Spirits 04/08
Professional Ratings
Gaining great popularity for its bold but beautifully aromatic dry red wines, Touriga Nacional is the noblest variety in Port wine. Most likely originating from the Dão region, today it grows throughout the Douro Valley as well. Somm Secret—As many as 80 grape varieties can be used to make Port wine, each contributing something unique to the resulting blend. Touriga Nacional adds great color, tannins and aromatics.
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.