A simultaneously classic and modern red wine from the award-winning Port winery Kopke, produced at the Barros family’s legendary vineyard, Quinta São Luíz near Tabuaço on the banks of the Douro River, a few kilometers from Pinhão.
Here in Cima Corgo’s butter pit, the touriga nacional, touriga franca, tinta roriz and tinta cão grapes are grown on schist class A ‘patamares’ at an altitude of 200-600 metres.
Kopke Douro Tinto, despite a modern label, is made with respect for both the useful parts of the traditions, as well as the grapes’ characteristic taste identities. In this wine, the quinta’s state-of-the-art technology is used to promote the purity of the wine, and you will thus find nothing of ‘yesterday’s’ more rustic profile with coarse tannins and brown fruit – a style that was probably more the result of too hot vinification than actually terroir characteristics and traditions worth preserving.
The desilted grapes are fermented in stainless steel tanks with approx. two weeks of temperature-controlled maceration. The wine is then aged for 12 months in 50% new barriques (French and Caucasian) and 50% 2nd year barriques, respectively.
The wine exhibits a fresh and fruity and slightly balsamic style with healthy, ripe tannins that keep the medium-bodied wine in check. You sense the minerality from the slate-rich subsoil, which gives the Douro wines their special character. The wine offers a juicy core of ripe red cherries, plums with a dusty minerality and a slender, characterful and floral stature.
We recommend that the wine be enjoyed with the medium-strong meat dishes at approx. 16-18°C.
The wine can be enjoyed young, but also lasts a handful of years in a good cellar. Kopke Douro Tinto is not filtered and only lightly cold-treated, which is why it will build up sediment over the years.
88 points Vinbladet
“Nose with dark plum fruit with excellent pepper spice, some oak, noticeable alcohol and good purity. Fresh, cool berry fruit with well-built tannin structure, subdued spice and well-integrated oak. A bit simple, but with nice density and excellent balance. Easy-drinking and straightforward.”
Niels Ehler 10/8-21
