Arinto - Bucelas, Portugal

Sorting out the different grapes of Portugal is something of a nightmare.  To be as small as it is, Portugal probably causes me more headaches and more confusion than any other wine region.  For some reason, nearly every grape grown in Portugal has a ton of synonyms and the primary name for the grape changes from region to region within the country.  Further, as you might expect given their geographical proximity, there are a lot of grapes that are common to both Spain and Portugal, but pretty much none of them go by the same name in each country.  Some of them are pretty easy to spot and sort out (like Albariño and Alvarinho), but for others, there's no way you could guess that the grapes were identical.  Take the case of Tempranillo.  In Portugal, Tempranillo is typically called Aragonez or Tinta Roriz, while in Spain, it is mostly called Tempranillo but is also known variously as Cencibel, Tinta de Toro, and Tinto Fino.   All you can really do is try to memorize the synonyms yourself because, as you can see, there really isn't any kind of clue in the various names themselves that would let you know that you are dealing with a single grape.

That's a problem, but it's a problem that is much easier to sort out than the use of a single grape name as a synonym for a variety of different, unrelated grapes.  This is something like the Trebbiano problem in Italy where there are a handful of different grapes with the word Trebbiano in their name which, it turns out, aren't related to one another at all.  This is the kind of problem Arinto has in Portugal, and it caused me quite a bit of confusion before I was able to finally sort it all out.  When I bought the wine that I'll be writing about below, I looked it up in Wikipedia when I was in the store and read this sentence: "Arinto is a synonym of Malvasia Fina and Loureiro Blanco," which I interpreted to mean Arinto = Malvasia Fina = Loureiro Blanco.  Which, it turns out, isn't true at all.  What it means is that Malvasia Fina is known as Arinto in some places and Loureiro Blanco is known as Arinto in some places as well, but the names Malvasia Fina, Loureiro Blanco and Arinto refer to three distinct grape varieties which aren't related to one another (the Madeira grape Sercial is also sometimes called Arinto but isn't related to the other three grapes either).  Just to add a bit to the confusion, Tempranillo is also known in some parts of Portugal as Arinto Tinto, though, you guessed it, it isn't related to Arinto in any way.

Thinking I finally had it all straight, I went to the VIVC database today to see what information was in there about Arinto.  A search for "Arinto" brings up this page.  The "Prime Name" field is where you're supposed to look to find the grape you're looking for, as the "Cultivar name" field pulls up every occurrence of the search term as a synonym of other grapes.  As you can see from the list, there is no "Prime name" entry for Arinto though there are 29 entries in the "Cultivar name" column that have Arinto somewhere in them.  It turns out that Arinto is officially known as Arinto de Bucelas which, I'm guessing, is an effort to lessen confusion given the proliferation of the Arinto name and possibly to differentiate it from another grape called Arinto the Douro Valley which is now officially known as Arinto do Douro.  These two Arintos are not related but, and here's the really crazy thing, Arinto do Douro is an accepted synonym for Arinto de Bucelas.

Wasn't that fun?

Anyway, the grape we're here to talk about is Arinto de Bucelas which, as you might expect, is most commonly grown in the Bucelas region of Portugal.  Bucelas is located just north of the city of Lisbon which is within the Lisboa region (which was called Estremadura until 2009 when it was changed to avoid confusion with the Spanish region Extramadura) which is a thin strip of land on the western Coast of Portugal, almost right in the middle from north to south.  Grapes have likely been grown in this region since Roman times, though the style has changed throughout the years.  In the Elizabethan age, the wine was fortified and it is thought that a reference to a wine called Charneco in Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part 2 is a reference to Bucelas wine.  Thomas Jefferson was a fan of the lighter, unfortified wines from this region in the late 18th - early 19th centuries, as was Arthur Wellesley, the 1st Duke of Wellington, who made the wine fashionable in London where it was known as "Portuguese Hock" (Hock being an old British term for wines from Germany).  Because of this name it was suspected for many years that Arinto may be related to Riesling, but it turns out that it isn't.  In the studies that I've read, Arinto's closest relative is probably the Gouveio grape, which is called Godello in Spain (and is not to be confused with Verdelho, despite Wikipedia's efforts to lead you to believe otherwise).

Wines from Bucelas fell on hard times, though.  As the city of Lisbon and its surrounding areas grew, they overtook some of the vineyards from the region.  By the 1980's, Bucelas was a monopoly as all of the remaining vineyard land was owned by a single company who was making bad wine.  Things have changed for the better over the past decade or so as more quality-conscious producers have set about trying to revive the past glories of Bucelas wine.

I was able to find a bottle of the 2009 Quinta da Murta Bucelas for about $9.  Wines from Bucelas must contain a minimum of 75% Arinto, but this wine is 100% (you can read the technical specs here).  In the glass the wine was a pale silvery lemon color with a greenish tint.  The nose was moderately aromatic with ripe pears, green melon, lemon peel and something faintly tropical that I wasn't able to put my finger on (banana was as close as I got).  On the palate the wine was on the lighter side of medium with fairly high, zippy kind of acidity, a hallmark of the grape.  There were flavors of lemony citrus and green apple with pineapple, lemon peel and something slightly herbal.  The wine was quite tart and was just screaming for some kind of food.  This would be great with raw oysters, grilled scallops or even chicken served in a creamy lemon sauce.  It's not a profound wine, but given the under $10 price tag, it's a pretty good deal.  I have a hard time finding wines I like to drink for under $10, but this one was satisfying and tasty.  They apparently make about 80,000 bottles of this stuff so if you run across it, give it a shot.

Weird Blend Wednesday - Alvarelhão, Pedral & Vinhão - Vinho Verde, Portugal

Alvarelhão Grapes

Today I'm debuting a new feature that I like to call Weird Blend Wednesday, where I take a look at a wine I've tried that is a blend of several different unusual grapes.  As a general rule, I usually like to stick with varietal wines for this site, but sometimes I come across something that is full of really interesting grapes that I just can't pass up.  The problem is that they don't really fit in with the format that I've been working with over the past year or so, so I end up either not drinking them, which is no fun at all, or drinking them and staring at the tasting note for months with no idea how to incorporate it into the site.  So, if I have a wine that is made up of three or more different grapes and it isn't clear whether one of the grapes in the wine makes up at least 50% of the total blend, then I'll relegate it to this little corner of the blog.  Welcome, friends, to Weird Blend Wednesday.

Today's featured wine is from the Vinho Verde region of Portugal, which we've taken a brief look at before when we talked about the Espadeiro grape.  As mentioned in that post, Vinho Verde is a wine region in northern Portugal.  Many of the wines that are made there are light, spritzy white wines that are so prevalent that many people think that Vinho Verde refers to that particular style of wine rather than the region, but wines from Vinho Verde come in all different colors and styles, from light spritzy whites to deep brooding reds.  Today's wine is somewhere in between.  Like the Espadeiro I wrote about previously, this was a rosé wine made from a blend of three different grapes: Alvarelhão, Pedral and Vinhão.  Like many Portuguese wines, I can't find any indication either on the bottle or online about how much of the blend each grape makes up, so this wine is the perfect bottle to kick off Weird Blend Wednesday.

Pedral Grapes

Alvarelhão is a red skinned grape that is currently grown on less than 500 hectares of land within Portugal.  It is one of the many permitted grapes in the Port blend, though it is usually little more than a bit player.  Its main synonym within Portugal is Brancelho, and it is known in Galicia, just over the Spanish border, as Brancellao.  It's not a particularly productive grape, but it makes up for it by being resistant to extreme temperatures and bad weather, which is helpful in the wet Vinho Verde region.  It is thought to be native to the Dão region of Portugal.

Pedral is also a red-skinned grape that is grown both in Spain, particularly in Galicia where it is known as Pedral, and Portugal, where it can often be found under the names Padral or Cainho.  It's grown mostly in the Monção sub-region of Vinho Verde, where it is one of the recommended varieties for planting, but it may actually be Spanish in origin.  It's pretty hard to say. There isn't a whole lot of information out there about this particular grape.

Vinhão Grapes

Vinhão is more commonly found under the names Souzão or Sousão, depending on where you are.  It is thought to be native to the Minho region of Portugal, which is in the extreme northwest corner of the country.  It is also one of the approved Port grapes, where, when it is used at all, it is prized for the deep color that it can provide to the wine.  While Portugal is the grape's native home, most of the world's plantings are found in the New World.  Australia uses the grape for their own take on Port while California and South Africa are also in the Vinhão business, presumably for its coloring effects, as wine made from the grape is not generally held in much esteem.  It seems that we'll get a chance to see if that's true before too long, as I have a Spanish bottle of wine made from the Souson grape which, according to the VIVC, is none other than Vinhão.

The wine that I tried which was made from these grapes was the 2009 Muralhas de Monção (which means "the walls of Monção") Vinho Verde rosé, which I picked up for about $9.  The wine is made by the Adega Coop. Regional de Monção, which is a massive collection of over 1,700 growers who farm about 1,200 total hectares of land spread between the Monção and the Melgaço regions of Vinho Verde.  The co-op was established just south of the town of Monção in 1958 and only had about 25 growers at the time.  The grapes are hand-harvested and vinified in stainless steel tanks.  In the glass, the wine had a medium salmon pink color with just a little bit of effervescence.  The nose was fairly aromatic with strawberry and grapefruit with some grapefruit peel and a slight grassy kind of herbaceousness to it.  On the palate the wine was on the lighter side of medium with fairly high acidity and just a touch of effervescence.  There were bright strawberry and watermelon fruit flavors with a touch of pink grapefruit as well.  The wine was simple, fresh and fruity.  If you can picture a zippy Sauvignon Blanc mixed with a bright, fruity rosé, that would be a good comparison for what this wine was like.  It's a great summer wine that is really hard to beat for the money.  Plus, how often do you get to cross off three different grapes from your Wine Century Club application for only $9?