Douro Valley: Hot Climate, Cool Wines

Douro Valley is the past and future of winemaking.

Whether from a global warming perspective, or just a wine-lover perspective, it's fascinating what's going on there. Douro Valley is one of the world's hottest fine-wine regions; so hot that for centuries, people thought fortified sweet wine was the only great product they could make.

Now, Port wine sales and production are sliding, but table wine production is growing. The quality is much higher than outsiders expected.

What's most surprising is the nature of the table wines. You might think that hot, dry weather would lead to a lot of bold, high-alcohol red wines. In the past it did, and sometimes it still does.

But there are more than 100 authorized grapes in the Douro Valley, some of which have barely been explored because for centuries they went into field blends. Most are indigenous grapes, well-suited to the climate, and many have been in the ground, growing long roots, for decades.

The upshot is that when producers want to make an elegant red wine, they can. This could be an example for the rest of the wine world.

"All the Douro, it's changed," says Miguel Roquette of Quinta do Crasto. "The old style was more concentration, more extraction. Now, we need to be balanced."

It's an enormous difference in a single generation. Twenty years ago, there weren't a lot of great Douro Valley table wines. The world has only gotten hotter, but Douro Valley table wines have gotten cooler.

Dirk Niepoort has been one of the leaders of this Douro Valley revolution. His family owned a typical Douro-style wine business; they made Port, most of it from grapes or even wine bought from local vineyard owners. Table wine wasn't important when Dirk joined the family business in 1987, shortly after returning from studying winemaking in California.

"When I was in California in '87 learning, a guy asked me, are you going to make [table] wine in the Douro?" Niepoort told Wine-Searcher. "I said, yes, probably I'll do some experimental things. I said my first wine is probably going to be a monster but in 25 years I'll probably make finer wines. Twenty-five years later, our wines are much finer, lighter, more precision, than they used to be. I'm trying to learn from old people. I'm trying to learn from my grandfather. I was [once] very Americanized and I thought, I want the best. Today I think the French are right. There are moments to drink the best and there are moments for other wines when they are at their best."

Niepoort took over the family business in 2005. The company still makes Port – in fact its Ports are some of the region's most interesting, as they are less extracted and less sweet than most – but its emphasis on table wines is clear. Niepoort does everything he can to make the wines more elegant.

One example is his wine Charme, his answer to Burgundy, which he loves to drink. He wondered if it was even possible to make a wine like Burgundy in his climate. He chose vines more than 70 years old from the Vale de Mendiz vineyard; like most old Douro Valley vineyards, they are a melange of grape varieties planted as a field blend. The grapes are picked early for the region and then trampled by foot, the traditional method for Port, in open-air granite vats called lagares. They begin fermentation in the lagare and are moved to used French oak barrels. (When Niepoort buys new oak barrels, it first uses them to ferment rosé, both to give the pink wine more complexity and to wash most of the oak flavors out of the barrel.) The result is an elegant, complex wine that is not high in alcohol.

Niepoort is one of the five Douro Boys, vignerons who banded together to get more attention for Douro Valley table wines. The Boys like to say that they make five different styles of wine, and it's true: Cristiano van Zeller, proprietor of Quinta do Vale do Maria, is an important member, and that winery's bottlings are unabashedly full bodied.

© W. Blake Gray/Wine-Searcher | Grapes fermenting in a traditional concrete lagare before being moved to oak.

But Francisco Olazabal, owner of Quinta do Vale Meão, says:, "We are working in the vineyard to have less alcohol." Olazabal says the winery uses less fertilizer, which he believes leads to more sugar in the grapes, and less irrigation.

He also says he has stopped tasting grapes in the vineyard, because it gives the wrong impression of how the finished wine will taste.

"Looking for ripeness is not our goal with every grape variety," Olazabal told Wine-Searcher. "If the grapes are less ripe, we have to extract less. If you make overripe wines you lose the identity. You get chocolate aromas and more fat. You make international wines, the kind of wines that Michel Rolland jets around the world to make. I don't like it. I like wines with more origin."

Quinta do Vale Meão does particularly well with younger vineyards that, unlike the old field blends, are planted with just one variety. Its varietal Touriga Nacionals, grown on granite soils that are uncommon in the valley, are especially good: fresh with a noticeably stony taste. They are foot-trodden in lagares for four hours before being transferred to small old French oak vats.

Quinta do Crasto, led by Douro Boy Jorge Roquette, has been influenced by its partnership with Bordeaux's Château Lynch-Bages for the wine Xisto, a Bordeaux-like wine (velvety tannins; layers of complexity) made with Douro Valley grapes that is only produced in good vintages. But Roquette's son Miguel says they are also influenced by the wines they like to drink.

"When we go to Burgundy and we have a glass of wine, we say, this is Burgundy," Miguel Roquette says. "It's important to say this about the Douro."

Quinta do Crasto's Reserva Old Vines wine, from a classic field blend, is intense and lively, with a complex aroma that keeps inviting more attention.

Douro Valley itself is getting more attention than ever, thanks to improved transportation links and a growing recognition of how great Portugal is for tourism. Fifteen years ago, it was difficult to even get to most wineries. Tasting rooms were in Porto if they existed at all.

Now, Quinta do Vallado is one of several wineries that have used European Union subsidies to help build tourism-magnet wineries that might help improve the economy of what is still one of the poorest regions in western Europe. Quinta do Vallado's winery has a rooftop pool with a stunning view. (Did I mention yet that Douro Valley is beautiful?)

"The new roads in Portugal changed everything," says Quinta do Vallado CEO João Ferreira Alvares Ribeiro. "I always believed if we had people come to visit, they would remember the brand in a way they wouldn't if they just ordered the wine in a restaurant. We used €20 million from the EU for 40 percent of the funds, and 60 percent bank loans. With that we were able to invest without any owner funds, which we didn't have at the time. We thought it was important to make everything impressive visually because this was the impression that visitors would take."

Indeed, if you wander around Porto these days, you hear American English everywhere from a steady parade of tourists. The gateway to Douro Valley has definitely been discovered. And the wines are ready for their closeup. The rest of the ever-warming wine world could take notice.