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A very subjective guide to Portuguese wine

Casas da Serra Tavira

It is no longer a secret that Portugal produces many excellent wines. Alongside the more common wines that you find in the supermarket, there are more and more wines from small, innovative producers that are only available in wine shops (garrafeiras) and good restaurants. One of the particularities of the Portuguese winescape are wines made from decade old field blends (Vinhas Velhas) which combine up to 30 or 40 different grape varieties in one small field. While in other countries, these field blends have mostly been replaced by single-varietal vineyards, Portugal still maintains a lot of its traditional multi-varietal small vineyards which are now being rediscovered by innovative new winemakers. If you would like to taste something different, look out for the Vinhas Velhas by winemakers like Cabeças do Reguengo or Susana Estebán.

In the following, we present some of the many excellent wines we’ve tasted so far. We start with a list of our favorite winemakers. Then we take a look at wines that are relatively easy to find in supermarkets and grocery stores. Then come wines that are hard to find, but all the more worth searching for. We also recommend some sparkling wines and are just beginning to explore the emerging world of natural wines.

As an expression of our wine enthusiasm, you will find high-quality wine glasses for both white and red wine from the Riedel Degustazione series at Casas da Serra Tavira. Wine cooler sleeves from the fantastic down-to-earth Adega de Borba winery will help you keep your wine fresh in summer. And a bottle opener will also be there, in case you didn’t bring your own favourite one.

Winemakers we highly recommend

Home of the best Portuguese wines, the wine regions of Alentejo, Douro, Dão, and Bairrada each boast their own unique charm and natural allure. In the Douro region, steep vineyards hug the Douro River, producing rich wines in the region’s sunny climate. In the Alentejo, vast plains with cork oak trees provide a backdrop for wines known for their bold flavors and smooth textures. In Dão, hills and streams create a cool climate, ideal for elegant wines with a balanced acidity. In Bairrada, near the Atlantic Ocean, vineyards benefit from a maritime influence, resulting in lively wines with crisp acidity, notably from the Baga grape. Finally, Lisbon, Península de Setúbal, the Algarve and others are newer to the group of wine regions and many of their smaller and more ambitious wineries are still relatively unknown.

Following these regions’ wine routes (rota do vinho) is a perfect way to explore their natural beauty, visit historic towns and cities and relax at one of the many old or modern wineries. Below we list some of our favorite winemakers for some of these regions (list is under construction).

Algarve

The Algarve is far better known for its beaches and tourism than for its wines. Unlike the country’s more established wine regions to the north, the Algarve has only a very recent tradition of high-quality winemaking, with just a handful of ambitious producers crafting individual wines that bear the unmistakable handwriting of dedicated winemakers. A few noteworthy projects are beginning to draw attention to the region’s potential, among them the Adega do Convento do Paraíso and Morgado do Quintão.

Alentejo from North to South

Take a look also at the website of the Alentejo wine route with additional wineries.

Dão

Here’s the link to the website of the Dão Wine Route.

Douro

Compared to the Dão Wine Route, the Port and Douro Wine Route website is anything but intuitive or user-friendly. But once you get there, the beauty of the landscape makes up for the lack of competence of those responsible for the website.

Bairrada

Bairrada is a wine region in central-western Portugal, situated between the Atlantic coast and the city of Coimbra, where the climate is markedly cooler and wetter than in the south. The region’s identity is defined above all by the Baga grape, a thick-skinned, high-acid, high-tannin variety capable of producing wines of considerable longevity and complexity. For much of the twentieth century, Bairrada’s reputation suffered from inconsistent winemaking and a focus on volume production, but a generation of more attentive producers has done much to restore confidence in the region’s potential. Alongside Baga, white wines based on Bical, Maria Gomes, Cerceal, and Arinto show genuine character, and Bairrada is also one of Portugal’s most established regions for traditional-method sparkling wine. At its best, the region produces reds of real distinction — structured, mineral, and age-worthy — that stand apart from the richer, more opulent styles found elsewhere in Portugal.

You’ll find much more information on the website of the Bairrada Wine Route.

Great wines you’ll find in a supermarket

White

Red

Inexpensive supermarket wines

Over the past decade or two, Portugal has built a reputation for good and inexpensive wines. More recently, and with a rapidly growing international demand for Portuguese wines, this has started to change. Prices have gone up, even for the most affordable wines, and producers are increasingly focusing on quality rather than quantity. This has led supermarkets like Continente and Pingo Doce to “invent” their own industrial wines whose names and labels imitate the products of traditional vineyards, but which are little more than a disguised bag-in-box wine. Sometimes they even get renowned winegrowers to produce a “special” edition that is exclusively sold in the respective supermarket. These wines use unregulated terms like “Premium”, “Signature” or “Gold Edition” in their names to simulate a higher degree of quality, which they definitely don’t have. Often these wines are advertised as bargains with up to 70 percent discount, but you can be sure that they are never worth more than the biggest discount the supermarkets are willing to give. If you want to discover the diversity of Portugal’s regions and varieties without “liquidating” half of your travel budget, here are a few recommendations.

White

Red

Wonderful wines that are hard to find in supermarkets

These wines are worth searching for. You may find them in specialized wine stores (garrafeiras) in Tavira, Vila Real de Santo António and other places throughout the Algarve. Restaurants often have only the more common wines, but there is an increasing number of exceptions such as the Mercearia da Aldeia in Santo Estevão with over 3000 different wines (see our list of restaurants).

White

Red

Natural wines

Portugal has seen a notable increase in small-scale natural wine production over the past decade, with producers working across the country’s main wine regions to craft low-intervention wines from indigenous varieties. In the Lisboa region, Desviso is a small winery in the Óbidos sub-region producing wines from organically farmed vineyards with minimal cellar intervention, while Safado, the project of Emanuel D.R. Frutuoso near Cadaval, vinifies old-vine whites from varieties including Alicante Branco, Seara Nova, and Boal Prior without temperature control, bottling unfiltered with very low sulphite additions and a characteristic mineral salinity. In the Vinho Verde region, Passo de Gigante‘s Moda Velha Pet Nat is a Loureiro-based pet-nat from Vila Verde, bottled mid-fermentation without additives, producing a lightly sparkling wine with fine bubbles and bracing acidity that references older local winemaking traditions. In the Douro, Portugal Boutique Winery‘s Guyot range draws on old-vine schist parcels in the Douro Superior, with the Guyot Branco — a field blend of Códega, Rabigato, and other indigenous whites — and the Guyot Tinto, from a single plot of century-old vines, both fermented with indigenous yeasts and aged in French oak with limited intervention. If you’re feeling adventurous, try the Guyot Funky range, for example the Funky Laranja orange wine.

Other wines

Sparkling wine (Espumante)

Portugal produces a range of traditional-method sparkling wines, known as Espumante, across several regions, with Bairrada historically at the centre of the country’s sparkling wine tradition, where the high-acid Baga grape and the white varieties Bical, Maria Gomes, and Arinto provide a natural foundation for wines with structure and longevity. Beyond Bairrada, the Dão, Douro, and Alentejo regions also produce Espumantes of genuine quality, with producers increasingly demonstrating that the style is not limited to the northwest. Among the sweetness classifications, Bruto and Bruto Natural are generally the most precise and elegant expressions, with low or zero dosage allowing the acidity and character of the base wine to come through clearly. The designation Reserva, however, does not function as it does with still reds — it indicates only that the wine has been held back in the cellar for a number of years before release, and while this can add complexity, it can equally result in wines that have lost their freshness and taken on oxidative notes. Among the producers worth seeking out are Vértice and Kompassus in the Douro, São Domingos and Quinta do Poço do Lobo in Bairrada, and Quinta das Bágeiras, also in Bairrada, whose traditional-method wines from Baga and Bical represent some of the more serious work being done in the region.

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