We roared up the zigzag roads of the Douro just after sunrise, taking the hairpin turns at breakneck speed. I bounced around the truck bed, snapping photos with one foot planted on my suitcase—to steady myself, but also to protect my precious liquid cargo. At the start of this trip, my suitcase was packed with clothing, but I’ve been steadily throwing away my possessions to make room for more wine. I was almost launched from the truck at one of the rockier switchbacks, but all the bottles were still intact when we arrived at Quinta Nova. I don’t think I’ve ever been anywhere this beautiful—a glance in each direction offers a new view onto one of the most visually sumptuous lands on the planet.
Terraced vineyards line the steep slopes, their parallel rows crossed with diagonal trails for the grape-pickers and their mules. Below, the Douro itself, wreathed in fog at this early hour, rolls slowly westward to the Atlantic. I spent the day hiking through the vineyard, from the chalky sand soils at the river’s edge to the red granite, flecked with pink quartz, which tops the hills. It’s too early in the year for grapes, but I stooped over the vines to sniff and taste the earth from which they sprout. “Minerality,” in the wine world, is a word that gets thrown around a lot, but not one that’s well-defined or understood.
I didn’t get it myself until yesterday, when I returned to the winery after my hike for a glass of Quinta Nova’s Grainha Reserva Branco. The wine, a blend of Viosinho, Gouveio, Rabigato, and Fernão Pires, spends 6 months on the lees in new and 2nd year French and Hungarian oak. Although it smelled of white flowers, rosemary, and eucalyptus, on the palate, I picked up the exact same taste that I got from licking the dirt back down the hill. The wine wasn’t exclusively mineralistic—notes of Anjou pear and green melon offered a fruitful counterbalance—but the taste of the place, the terroir, was right there in my glass. Grainha Reserva Branco is medium-full bodied, with light-medium acid and a lingering honeysuckle finish. I’d pair it with lobster, salmon feta salad, or—to highlight the wine—a humble bread and cheese.
Check out Quinta Nova online at www.quintanova.com, and if you really want to know what minerality is, go visit a vineyard, eat their dirt, and then drink their wines. Don’t be a sissy about it—you need more B12 in your diet anyway.
Leave a Reply