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Excomungado 2013

Quinta de Vale de Pios

Winemaker: Joaquim Almeida Region: Douro, Portugal

Alc: 13% : Touriga Nacional (25%), Touriga Franca (25%), Tinta Cão (25%), Tinta Roriz (25%) PH: 3.95 Profile: Lush and intense fruit with robust tannin from stems, not . TA: 4.06 g/L Provides a great example of the components each brings to the RS: 0.7 g/L blend. Touriga Nacional- floral, blue fruit; Touriga Franca- black fruit, tannins; Tinta Cao- red fruit, juiciness, alcohol; Tinta Roriz ()- Sulfur: total 107 free 29 red fruit, acidity. Overall the starts with rich blue fruit on the nose along with lavender, sage, and violet. The palate is still juicy, but quite a Soil: Schist bit drier than the nose lets on. Altitude: 325m (1066ft) Grape Growing: Joaquim farms without certification, but is essentially Age: 20 years organic. Douro is extremely easy place to farm organically. Manual , manual sorting. Production Size: 6666 cases : Spontaneous fermentation. Stem inclusion, 18 months Pairing: Beef Stew, Braised aging in stainless steel, no oak. Beef, Filet Mignon, Strip Steak, Venison, Lean cuts of beef More About the Wine: Joaquim Almeida at Quinta de Vale de Pios in the Cuisine: Portuguese, Brazilian, Douro, Portugal makes traditional and puts his own twist on some Argentine, American of them. In the Douro, when making dry it is traditional to use native traditional grapes and most often a healthy dose of oak in the process. Joaquim decided to challenge status quo and make a red wine without de-stemming and without oak.The “Excomungado” bottling represents Joaquim’s youngest wines produced with no oak aging and stem inclusion to extract tannin and power in this young vine. You can really only pull this off if you have extremely healthy and pure berries. The outcome is a highly fruit-tannin driven wine without the normal woody characteristic. Essentially, he created a “hipster wine” in a place there are no hipsters, just hip replacements.

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