Wine Styles

Light, refreshing, fruity whites

• Characteristics

  The cool, hilly, verdant north west of Portugal is the main source of a unique style of white wine with lowest alcohol and high, fresh acidity: Vinho Verde (vinho verde, ‘green wine’, and means ‘young wine’). Many also have a slight prickle of fizz, once a remnant of the carbon dioxide of fermentation, now often added at bottling time. Vinho Verde may be made from numerous grape varieties, some aromatic, some not, often a selection blended together. It may be dry or medium-dry.

• When and how to drink

  All of these are wines to drink young, ideally from the latest vintage. Vinho Verde and other light, fresh wines are by definition ideal in summer. Whatever time of year, they make refreshing aperitifs, are perfect with salads (balancing the acidity of the dressing), good with seafood and fish, and a foil for fatty foods or dishes. Try them also with Thai or other South East Asian cuisines.

Full-bodied whites

• Characteristics

  Higher in alcohol and richer in texture, these come from vineyards bathed in copious sun and high summer temperatures. There are soft, rich wines from the Alentejo, intense, minerally whites from the Douro, and full-bodied whites from Trás-os-Montes in the north east. Portugal has the advantage of numerous indigenous grape varieties that are able to keep their acidity in hot climates, and including these in a blend provides balancing freshness for rich white wines.

• When and how to drink

  Full-bodied whites may be further enriched by fermentation in oak, which adds more fullness and texture, and/or maturation in oak, which may give richness and gentle oaky flavours, or sometimes dominant oak flavour. The oak-ageing of top-of-range Reserve whites from Dão and Lisboa (and occasionally elsewhere) rounds them out to full-bodied status. These are all wines for correspondingly bigger food flavours and richer food. Wine with very obviously oaky flavours are harder to match well with food in general, but they can be a good match for smoked foods.

Light-bodied, tangy, fruity reds

• Characteristics

  The vineyards along Portugal’s windy Atlantic coast (the ones that make light, fresh, fruity whites) also make some of their reds in a similar light, tangy style, with alcohol typically nowadays around 11%. This includes the cool, often rainy Vinho Verde region in the north west. To people outside Portugal it’s a fairly well-kept secret that around 40% of all Vinho Verde is red, its deep red colour, unusual for such a cool region, coming partly from the red flesh of the local Vinhão grapes, as well as their skins.

• When and how to drink

  Red Vinho Verde goes well with freshly-grilled sardines, and with the often rich or fatty meats, offal and charcuterie that are popular in these parts. It tends to come in a tall, lean bottle, like white Vinho Verde. Give it a try! If it won’t come to you, you may need to take a trip to the North West.

Rich, round, full-bodied reds

• Characteristics

  Alentejo hot summers make ripening easy, and sweet grapes mean rich fruit and lots of body. Alentejo reds are made from a variable blend of grape varieties, including Trincadeira and Aragonez, Alicante Bouschet and Syrah, Touriga Nacional and Cabernet Sauvignon. They may be inexpensive, rich, round and full, or very expensive, even richer, dense, and oak-aged, but still with a certain opulence and easy-drinking charm. Occasional other red wines from elsewhere in Portugal also fall into this rich, ripe style, from the upper reaches of the Douro, or the Tejo, for example.

• When and how to drink

  Relatively low tannin makes these wines quite easy to pair with food, but the food flavours need to be equally big if they are not to be overcome by the wine. Game, lamb, beef, pork, offal, charcuterie, plainly cooked meats or richly sauced meats, all can work well with this style of red wine. Ripe Touriga Nacional (so long as it is not too heavily oaked) is particularly wonderful with beef, as is Aragonez with lamb, especially lamb flavoured with thyme.

Robust reds

• Characteristics

  The Douro Valley is the most reliable source for this style of red wine. Serious, big and often firmly tannic in their first few years of life, top Douro reds nevertheless have their own robust style of elegance, and often a complexity of flavour that comes from the mix of grapes, sometimes “vineyard blends” where old vines of mixed varieties are planted together. These are wines that age and develop well, their tannins softening, their fruit mellowing. The higher the price, the more you might expect them to repay ageing – but this can only be a generalization. Trás-os-Montes is the wine region to the north of the Douro Valley, also mountainous, growing the same grapes and also making big, robust reds. Another source of firm, robust reds is Bairrada. In good, hot vintages, red Bairrada made from the traditional Baga grape has full body as well as high acid and tannin, maturing to a softer, complex, savoury, malty wine of great originality.

• When and how to drink

  Robust reds are a fine match also in summer for game, meats, and offal. The tannin of young robust wines seems softer and easier with meats cooked in stews, especially when red wine is an ingredient. Both Douro/Trás-os-Montes wines and Bairrada Baga make good matches with certain cheeses; both are, surprisingly, delicious with fresh, curdy goat’s cheese.

Elegant reds

• Characteristics

  Dão has perhaps the greatest concentration in Portugal of elegant reds; altitude is high, the soils granite, the climate cool, ripening slow. Fine-quality Touriga Nacional is blended with Tinta Roriz, Alfrocheiro, Jaen and other grapes to make intensely-flavoured, perfumed reds with good acidity and lovely balance. The red wines of Palmela on the Península de Setúbal can be elegant, made from the Castelão grape, which is difficult elsewhere but able in the sandy soils of the Setúbal Peninsula to ripen well and give reds wines with complex, fruity flavours, good acidity and balanced tannins, ageing to a cedary character not unlike that of mature Cabernet Sauvignon.

• When and how to drink

  These are versatile wines, fine at any time of year, good to drink by themselves, and easy with a range of food, from poultry to red meats to cheese.

White

• Characteristics

  White ports come in various levels of sweetness. Seco (dry) is actually quite sweet, meio seco (medium dry) pretty sweet, and doce a drink for the seriously sweet of tooth. A new style of port, sweet, fortified and rosé, this is made to drink chilled and neat, or in cocktails.

• When and how to drink

  White Ports are drunk as an aperitif, sometimes mixed with tonic, neat on ice, or in cocktails. There are also more expensive, longer-wood-aged versions with a nuttier flavour, also best chilled and served as an aperitif.

Tawny

• Characteristics

  Tawnies are amber-coloured to brown, and nutty-dried-fruit-figgy in flavour thanks to years of slow, controlled oxidation in large wooden barrels or vats. They go by two names, either Colheita (specifying a vintage) or Aged Tawny (with a number of decades declared on the label, from 10 to 40 years). Aged tawny is leaner and more spirit the more decades it declares.

• When and how to drink

  Colheitas and Aged Tawnies are best served chilled, summer or winter. They might be an aperitif, or drunk at the end of the meal, perhaps with walnuts to nibble. 10 or 20-year-old are the best of all ports for Stilton, and delicious with Portugal’s star cheese, Queijo Serra da Estrela.

Ruby

• Characteristics

  Ruby Ports, where the Vintage port is the other top-end style, are redder, firmer, slightly sweeter and fruitier than tawny. You can really taste the sweet ripeness of the hot sun of the Douro Valley in this style of port. In years of old, vintage port had to be kept for years for its tough tannin and spirit to soften to drinkability. Now the spirit used to fortify port is of finer quality, and modern methods in vineyard, cellar and warehouse make vintage port a more balanced, less tannic wine that is drinkable after only a few years, although it will still age and develop complexity. There are numerous more modest categories, like Crusted, Late-Bottled Vintage (LBV), Late Bottled, Reserve, Premium Ruby and Ruby.

• When and how to drink

  Ruby is best drunk at cool room temperature, and is good with certain cheeses, Queijo Serra da Estrela, Queijo de Azeitão, Cheddar, even strong, unpasteurized Brie in the case of LBV. They are also a good match with bitter chocolate or coffee desserts. The French drink this style of port as an aperitif, the English after the meal – take your pick.