Portuguese White Wine

 Portuguese white wine is not something you come across every day. Recently I had the opportunity to taste five high quality Portuguese white wines. They showed interesting personalities, quite different from anything you would taste from France, Italy, Germany, the US, or Australia. All these wines are blends of a number of indigenous varieties. The winemakers claim this is not important. It is about the site.

The first wine was a 2019 Antonio Madeira A Liberdade from Dão. This is a blend of 23 varieties, wines come from two vineyards 25 and 80 years old. This wine has a darker, almost golden colour. In the mouth, the wine is quite thick with yellow peach on the front palate, but merging into lemon curd and a saline finish. The structure is more rounded than linear and the acidity not high (92 points).

The second wine was the 2019 Luis Seabra Xista Ilimitado from Douro. Louis Seabra studied under Dirk Niepoort, the most influential white wine maker in Portugal. This wine had a lighter colour, probably reflecting higher altitude vineyards. and more of a citrus flavour, and also stone fruit. There is Asian Five Spice and good energy in this wine (92 points).

The third wine was different again. The 2018 Vinho Imperfeitos D&V Code from Dão and Vinho Verde is made at tiny volumes and is a bit of a cult wine. The wine has good drive on the back of citrus flavours. This is quite a gentle wine. There are almond flavours on the palate. The acidity is medium. This wine is perhaps the most sophisticated of the line-up, but the price is hard to justify (93 points).

My favorite was the 2019 Antonio Madeira Branco. This wine has incredible personality. The wine is very peppery. The wine has more of a herbal character, with celery, fennel, and ginger prominent. This is quite a unique wine, very spicy. It would work well with Asian food (93 points). 

The final wine was the 2020 Luis Seabra Xisto Cru Branco. It is a field blend, as the others, with Rabigato the main variety. The vines are at least 70 years old, grown on schisty soil. The dominant flavour in this wine is pineapple. The wine has spent time on lees. It has some lactic or creamy feel, probably from malolactic fermentation. There is some minerality on the palate. The wine is well balanced with a bit more acidity than in the other wines (92 points).

If you like a more full-bodied white wine, you go for #1. If you like a citrus wine more closer to what you know, wine #2 is for you. Wine #3 is only for people where money is no object. Wine #4 is the most unusual, very spicy. And wine #5 is the most worked and complex wine.