Winemaker Notes
With a dark crimson color, this Touriga Nacional boasts great concentration and aromas of bergamot and wild fruits, with violet and spicy hints. The taste is sweet, round and mature, with silky tannins. Red fruits follow through from the nose into a long, concentrated, fresh finish.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
This is an impressive, powerful and age-worthy wine, with dense tannins that are layered with black fruit and cut with acidity. The 16-month wood-aging regimen shows in the wine's rounded character. Age for 2–3 years.
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Wine Spectator
This rich and fruity red shows ample violet notes, with touches of cinnamon and spice to the red plum, cherry and ripe melon flavors. Smoke and tar linger on the chewy finish.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2010 Touriga Nacional, sourced from the winery's 1994 plantings, was aged in French oak for 16 months, only 30% new, however. This has become one of Douro's nicer monovarietal bottlings from year-to-year. In the occasionally difficult 2010 vintage, it shows surprisingly well, crisp, bright and mouthwatering on the finish, with solidity in the mid-palate and power on the end. It was a little disjointed in its youth and not quite as aromatic when I first retasted it in the USA compared to how it showed in Douro. Ninety minutes of aeration changed that, allowing it to express its Touriga Nacional character well. It does finish a bit tart, but I loved the mouthwatering finish. For best results, give this a year or two to settle down. It has room to improve. Drink 2014-2024.
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.