For The Love Of Port

This is a Douro DOC wine made from Touriga Nacional and Tinta Roriz grapes. Some bricking, lots of mushrooms and forest floor with a hint of cranberries linger on the nose. Light bodied but not thin by any means. Still some light cherries mixed in with some saddle leather, tar, and surprisingly some still modest tannins. With that much tannins still showing I wonder how tannic this was when it was a youngster? This starts a little slow on the front end but picks up steam by the middle and back end. The finish started out a little short, but with about 20 minutes of air it has lengthen quite a bit with cranberries and a dollop of barnyard to balance it out. This is fully mature, if not a tad past, and easily could be mistaken blind for an older California Cabernet. A nice little wine that I honestly didn't have high expectations for. 86 points.

My friends would get a hoot out this bottle. Didn't know Mateus made something worth while!

Didn't know Mateus made something worth while!

I also never knew they made anything but the cheap stuff in their signature oblong bottle. I have no idea where they got their grapes for this in the Douro, but will try to find out the history of this bottle. I paid $5 at auction and worth every penny. Oh yeah, the original price tag was still on it.... $10.02

This comes from the incredibly deep pocketed Sogrape that now owns Ferreira, Sandeman and Offley as well. They are huge landholders. The castle they own is impressive. If you'd like to look at one of their properties which we come close to passing on every trip in the Douro, look at the picture of the "big house" in the Travel Page on homepage and you'll get an idea of how well off these folks are. Sogrape is family owned as I am sure you know, by the Guedes family. They are like the Gallo Family in Northern Portugal, but with much cleaner politics.