Winemaker Notes
Rich and powerful, this wine shows notes of raspberry, black cherry and plums. On the palate it is fresh and velvety with well integrated tannins and a long, persistent finish.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2016 Pintas Character is a field blend from old vines aged for 18 months in 80% used French oak. It comes in at 14% alcohol. Originally seen as a tank sample, this is now bottled and in the USA. Deeper, more powerful and certainly fruitier than the Manoella Tinto (and in this vintage another $10 in list price, to be fair), this is simply a more serious wine in many respects this year. Ripe, concentrated and succulent, yet beautifully crafted with the fruit well supported by the structure, this focused red (fruity but not a fruit bomb) is exceptional on many grounds. Still a bit too young, it could use another year or so in the cellar. Yet the tannins are not terribly hard, so it's not too difficult to drink now. It will easily hold for more than another decade, and it should improve as well. We'll take the aging curve in stages, though, and see where we are as 2030 rolls around—assuming you can keep your hands off of it. It is worth leaning up on this today.
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Wine & Spirits
This is from a 1970 planting in the Vale Mendiz, the hills above the town of Pinhão. It’s a mix of 30 varieties, farmed by Jorge Serôdio Borges and Sandra Tavares da Silva. They make it in a traditional way at their winery nearby, foot treading the grapes in stone lagares. Then they make it more contemporary by aging it for 18 months in French oak barriques, half new, half one year old. That new oak is what makes the first impression, saturating the wine with rich tannins and some bitterness. Violet scents emerge out of the plump center of the wine, along with the schistscented grape-skin tannins. This is bold, juicy and ripe, needing bottle age to yield its fruit.
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Wine Spectator
A graphite streak cuts through the crushed boysenberry and red plum fruit, edged with cedar and olive accents, in this fresh, medium-bodied red. Plush, up-front tannins match the herb details on the finish. Drink now through 2025.
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.