Douro: Harbor in an Economic Tempest
In the year or so since the economy plummeted without a parachute, Americans have not stopped buying wine. They?ve simply bought cheaper wine. Whether this will ultimately be seen as a time of sacrifice or an eye-opening education remains to be determined, but I have a hunch that many people will find it easy, when the economy recovers, not to resume their free-spending ways.
Why? Because this is a prime opportunity to learn that more expensive wine is not necessarily better wine. Oh, this is not a novel idea. In fact, it’s a much abused idea, brandished often by the reverse snobs who like to sneer at the suckers spending $50 for a bottle of Burgundy when they could have a couple of cases of Two-Buck Chuck for the same price.
Of course you can. And for the price of the one-volume complete works of Shakespeare, you can buy a truckload of comic books. Some people would be happier with the comics.
Just because a silly argument can be constructed on the foundation of a truth doesn’t make it less of a truth. So yes, more expensive wine is not necessarily better wine.
This is true everywhere, but it’s an idea that I think has special resonance in areas with a rapidly developing wine industry. Case in point: the Douro region of Portugal.
With its twisting rows of terraced vines, which seem to undulate down steep, rocky hillsides in the shimmering heat, the Douro (pronounced DOH-roo) is one of the most beautiful and forbidding wine territories in the world. It is indeed rapidly developing, but it’s by no means new.
For centuries most of the Douro grapes went into fortified wine, Port, whether the cheap aperitif, the great tawnies or the prized vintage monsters that required decades to tame. But over the last 20 years, as the world’s tastes have evolved and as the Portuguese wine industry has modernized, still wines have become more and more important to the Douro economy.
Once something of a curiosity, still red wines from the Douro are now easy to find in shops. I’ve written several times that inexpensive reds from the Douro and from Portugal in general can be great buys, but these wines tell only part of the Douro story. Equally important are the number of sophisticated, well-financed producers, many with ties to the great Port houses, who are making ambitious, expensive wines.
In a recent tasting of Douro reds, the wine panel found an enormous disparity in price among our favorite wines. We sampled 20 wines, ranging from $7 to $85 a bottle, with nine bottles costing $21 or less and nine for $45 or more.
Of the 10 wines we liked best, five came from the cheap group and five from the expensive group. And among those 10 bottles, we clearly preferred the less expensive wines.
For the tasting Florence Fabricant and I were joined by Laura Maniec, director of wine and spirits for B. R. Guest Restaurants, and Byron Bates, a sommelier and wine consultant.
The price disparity in the tasting was not by design, but it represented a cross-section of the Douro wines in the marketplace. Our No. 1 wine, the 2006 Altano from Symington Family Estates, was also our best value at a mere $10. It was lively and dry, with plummy, earthy flavors that were altogether pleasing.
Why did we rate it higher than our No. 6 wine, the 2005 Reserva from Quinta do Vallado, a $66 bottle, or, for that matter, our No. 7, the most expensive bottle in the tasting, the 2005 Quinta do Vale Meão, an $85 bottle?
No doubt, the more expensive wines were made with a great deal of care. Yields were kept low, and the grapes were babied from harvest through vinification. Winemakers sought maximum concentration and aged the wines in the finest new oak barrels.
The result, very generally speaking, is powerful wines of great impact, with penetrating fruit flavors buttressed by the spicy, creamy chocolate and vanilla of new oak.
The Quinta do Vallado, for example, is exuberantly fruity, with plenty of oak and a dose of spiciness for personality. The Quinta do Vale Meão is even more powerful, a veritable fruit and oak bomb.
By contrast, concentration and power are not the aims with the less expensive wines. They are not lavished with new oak, and textures tend to be leaner rather than plush.
We liked the balance of the No. 1 Altano, its easy drinkability and the fact that it would do well on the table. It didn’t seem expensive — the polished oakiness is often a giveaway in blind tastings — but it tasted harmonious.
Similarly, our No. 2 bottle, the 2007 Quinta de la Rosa for $16, was fresh, bright and focused, while our No. 3, the 2006 Lavradores de Feitoria for $12, was a pretty, winsome wine. It didn’t have the concentration or lingering power of a more expensive bottle, but it made up for it by being delicate and engaging.
OF course, this dichotomy is overly stark. Our No. 10 bottle, the 2005 Quinta dos Aciprestes from Real Companhia Velha, a $12 bottle, was extravagantly fruity, but without the intensity and concentration of the more expensive wines. Meanwhile, our No. 4 wine, the 2005 Quinta do Vale D. Maria, a $50 bottle, was huge and ripe, but well structured and focused.
For the most part, these more expensive bottles are fine winemaking achievements, but not necessarily more enjoyable wines. A saving grace in all of our favorite wines, however, is that they show off the Douro’s indigenous grapes, like touriga nacional, the primary grape of Port; tinto roriz, which is otherwise known as tempranillo; and touriga franca, another Port grape. Their spicy, plummy flavors are evident in most of these wines, regardless of efforts to overwhelm them with oak.
While these grapes are usually blended, as in Port, one of the wines was made of 100 percent touriga nacional. That was our No. 8 bottle, also made by Quinta do Vallado. Its fruitiness did not have the skyrocketing trajectory of the blended version, but at $60 its price was on the same arc.
