Grape Variety # 94: Touriga Franca

Portugal is home to numerous grape varieties that are relatively unknown in the US. One such grape--Touriga Franca--is used in the blend that makes up Port. But it also goes into Portuguese table wines, where it imparts rich flavors and aromas. With Portuguese wines in general rare finds on wine shop shelves, I was thrilled to find an example of Touriga Franca in a local store for under $10 and check off another box on my Wine Century Club worksheet.

The 2004 Symington Altano is made from a blend of Tinta Roriz--the Portuguese name for Tempranillo--and Touriga Franca grapes. ($6.95, Chronicle Wine Cellar; available from other merchants for between $7 and $9) The wine was dark, dark ruby in color--a characteristic of the variety. There were heady aromas of plum, flowers, blackberry, and chocolate. Flavors of black raspberries and sour cherries picked up a deeper, earthy note as it moved across your tongue. There flavors dissipated quickly after the wine was swallowed, and the aftertaste was predominantly of earth. Good QPR.

Where this wine shone was with food, which helped to keep the earthiness of the wine in balance. It was especially good with pork in tangy BBQ sauce, since the sourness of the cherry paired nicely with the sweet, tangy sauce.

Weekend Wine Shopping: WBW Made Me Do It!

Wine Blogging Wednesday. It's good news and it's bad news. Good news because we learn a lot about wine. Bad news because, once we learn about it, we want to drink it.

So this weekend's wine shopping is dedicated to helping you find the wines to either feed the need for Portuguese vino that was caused by reading all those fabulous tasting notes that Ryan and Gabriella drew together from WBW #38, or to feed the need for Burgundy wines in preparation for Neil the Brooklynguy's WBW #39 in November.

After I had my bottle of Portuguese white, I knew I wanted to taste more Portuguese wine. So I clicked over to domaine547, my favorite armchair wine store, and bought one of the new "wine blogger packs." This is a new idea at domaine547, where wine bloggers select a few wines that they think that their readers would like to try. The first pack was put together by Catavino's own Ryan and Gabriella, and included three carefully selected Portuguese wine. The price? $50. The Catavino Pack contained a zesty 2006 Famega Vinho Verde; a hearty 2003 Esporao Trincadeira; and a 2003 Bacalhoa Touriga So. Opening the box was a bit like opening a present--there was a great information sheet (which included the recipe for a perfect food pairing for the Trincadeira!) and a little gift (a much snazzier foil cutter than the one I presently own). I'm happy to have my three bottles of Portuguese wine, and to have reduced the sizable carbon footprint I planted on LA in the past few weeks trying to find wine for WBW #38! Are you going to someone's house for Thanksgiving? This would be a great "send ahead" hostess gift! I'd sure be happy to have this arrive at my house before the guests, and I might even save a bottle for you to drink with me.

With WBW #39 looming, and Turkey Day on the horizon, I headed to Chronicle Wine Cellar to see if I could find some burgundy that would fit Neil's brief. I'm in a comfortable rut drinking my Girardin second labels, but Neil suggested I try something else and happily Chronicle has a great selection of white burgundies right now. I scored a 2004 Domaine Larochette-Manciat Pouilly-Vinzelles Les Longeays ($15.95). They also had a Pouilly-Fuisse from this maker for under $20, a Girardin Rully for $24.95, and some other scrumptious looking white burgundies from the Cote de Beaune. When I was there Elizabeth was also packing some Portuguese reds (go figure...), including the 2004 Symington Altano made with Tinta Roriz and Tourgia Franca grapes ($6.95). They still have bottles of affordable and tasty Cono Sur wines on the shelves, too. Jerry Hall of Winewaves likes these Chilean pinots, so they're worth a try considering they are under $10 at Chronicle.

We're entering into the part of the calendar that I call "The Crazies." Beat the crowds and calm the hysteria by getting a few nice bottles into your house now. With these bottles safely in my possession, I can think about sipping Trincadeira Halloween night, and finding a good chicken dish to have with that Pouilly-Vinzelles.

Wine Blogging Wednesday #38: Portuguese Wine

It's that time again: Wine Blogging Wednesday. Today, bloggers all over the world will be telling us what they tasted when they uncorked bottles of Portuguese table wines. Ryan and Gabriella at Catavino cooked up the theme for WBW #38, and asked us to look for Portuguese wines that were not the fortified port wines most of us associate with the region. Portugal makes beautiful table wines, too, and they challenged us to look beyond the popular Douro region, and beyond the familiar Mateus and vinhho verde to look for something new and different to taste our palate.

I succeeded in steering clear of the Mateus, and the vinho verde, but I did end up with a pick from the Douro. It turned out to be oddly challenging to find a Portuguese wine in LA, and the best selections were often in chain shops, like Beverages & More. But I did find a bottle--a white, no less--at a local store and it impressed me enough to wonder why more merchants don't stock wines from this region. If they are anything like this one, they are good, affordable food wines. My pick for WBW #38 was the 2005 Adriano Ramos Pinto, a white wine made by an old wine house that specialized in port founded in 1880 by the man whose full name is on this wine: Adriano Ramos Pinto. ($10.99, Mission Wines; available from other merchants for between $10 and $13).

The wine is blended from three varieties of grape: Viozinho (60%), a low-yielding white variety used in white port; another low-yielding white variety, Rabigato (30%); and Arinto (10%), a white variety that brings acidity to the mix and is used in making vinho verde. I've never tasted anything made with any of these grapes, so I wasn't sure what I was in for. Turns out that this white blend resembled an aromatic, bone-dry riesling or a medium-bodied, barely oaked sauvignon blanc. There were soft aromas of grapefruit, citrus pith, and a whiff of petrol when you first opened it--just like a riesling. These appealing smells led into the flavor palate, where clean grapefruit and mineral notes met up at the back of your throat with a whiff more petrol. At 12.5% alc/vol. it was a very pleasant food wine, all the more so because it was very lightly oaked. The wine was aged for only six months, with 80% of the juice spending its time in steel vats, and 20% of the juice spending its time in new French oak. Given its low price, and its interesting mix of aromatics and dry flavors, I thought this wine represented very good QPR.

This wine would be an excellent pairing with not-terribly-spicy Indian or Asian food, richer fish dishes, light chickendishes, and salads. We had it with Indian-spiced Bombay Sliders, mini chicken burgers with lots of aromatic spices and herbs in them. These were popped onto dinner rolls, topped with some curried mayonnaise, and some sliced veggies. We had oven-fries made with sweet potatoes along side. The wine really went well with this range of flavors and ingredients, and would have been a particularly good option for those who don't like the sweet impression that rieslings (even dry rieslings) give.

While finding the wine was a challenge, I'm glad I did locate a Portuguese table wine--and a white, no less. I'm going to keep looking for wines from this region, and try to learn some more about the grape varieties. This wine was a real surprise, and I think I'm missing a lot of interesting wine. Thanks to Ryan and Gabriella for the great theme, and as always thanks to Lenn Thompson of Lenndevours for dreaming the event up more than three years ago. I'll post the link to the roundup when it is available, as well as a link to November's theme.