The Wine Pair Podcast

Portuguese Wine Primer #3: Douro Tinto!

• The Wine Pair • Season 1 • Episode 170

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Douro Tinto is often called a “Steakhouse Wine” but that really doesn’t do it justice. This fabulous wine from the Douro region of Portugal - an area most famous for the fortified wine Port - is a rich, smooth, and lovely drinking wine that needs to be on your table. Grown on very steep hillsides, the variety of the grapes in the blend can include up to 50 varieties, but the majority of the blend is usually Touriga Nacional, Touriga Franca, and Tinta Roriz - which is the Portuguese name for Tempranillo, most famously in Rioja wines from Spain. Because of the wide-variety of grapes used, the blends can vary, but overall you can expect a lush, juicy wine with enough acidity that it pairs amazingly well with food. If you are looking for an alternative to your rich Syrah or Bordeaux or Napa Cab, and you want a wine with more balance and less punch-you-in-the-face oak, Douro Tinto is a wine you have to seek out. Wines reviewed in this episode: 2019 Quinta das Carvalhas Douro Tinto, 2021 Wine & Soul Manoella Douro Tinto

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Show Notes

Episode #170: Portuguese Wine Primer #3: Douro Tinto!  00:00

Hello! And welcome to The Wine Pair Podcast. I’m Joe, your sommelier of reasonably priced wine, and this is my wife and my wine pairing partner in crime, Carmela. And we are The Wine Pair! 

If you are new to our podcast, here is what you can expect. If you love wine and want to find great wines at affordable prices, and you want to expand your wine horizons, and you want to have some laughs and fun while doing it - then you are in the right place! Each week we explore a different wine varietal, style, brand, or region of the winemaking world, and learn about what makes them worth knowing about. And then we taste 2-3 of those wines that are reasonably priced to let you know if they are worth your hard earned money. If that feels like your vibe, then we are super happy you are here.And, we are proud to say that Decanter Magazine calls us fun, irreverent, chatty, and entertaining.

Carmela, it’s been about 5 months since we did our last Portuguese Wine Primer episode, and faithful listener Tips2LiveBy on Bluesky sent us a note about a month ago asking us if we have done episodes on Portuguese wine, and so, we thought it’s about time to bring back another Portuguese Wine Primer! This is our third, and the first was on the great white wine Vinho Verde, and the second was on the great dessert wine Port, and so for this episode, we are going to focus on one of the great dry red wines of Portugal known as Douro (Doe-oo-roe)Tinto.

Overall, I will say that, relative to Italy, France, and Spain, Portugal does not get as much press or attention for their wine - and they should. We mentioned this in a previous episode, but Portugal, compared to its size, produces a ton of wine, and exports a lot, too. Portugal is the 93rd most populous country in the world, and yet it is about the 10th largest producer of wine in the world, so don’t sleep on the Portuguese. They also export about half of the wine they produce each year, although I wonder if that will be impacted by tariffs. I assume so, and that will suck. 

Let’s talk a bit about the Douro (Doe-oo-roe) Valley, where the wine we are tasting and reviewing today comes from before we dig more into the Douro Tinto wine itself in the next section, shall we, Carmela? 

I should also note again that the Douro is most famous for Port wine. The Douro Valley is one of those places in Europe where the geography and history are just intertwined with the wine and winemaking. It is in the northern area of Portugal, bordering on Spain to its east, and just to the east of the Vinho Verde wine growing region of Portugal. 

The terrain in the Douro is quite stunning - it is mountainous with steep slopes and deep valleys, and the vineyards are carved into the slopes in what could be described as narrow, rocky terraces. This means making wine in the Douro is not for the faint of heart - it is very challenging and rugged. But it is also unique and treasured, and the terraced landscape is a UNESCO World Heritage site

The soil is also very unique, and is made of granite and schist soils. What, you may ask, are schist soils? Well, schist soil is a type of soil made up of small pieces of a rock called schist, and schist is a type of metamorphic rock. It tends to be rocky, well-draining, and poor in nutrients, which can be challenging for most plants, but is great for wine grapes because they do real well in water stress as we have said many times. So, the rocky soil is perfect for making rich, deep wines. 

The climate in the Douro Valley is interesting because it is sheltered by mountain ranges, so although Portugal is this thin strip of land near the ocean, the Douro has more of a continental climate with hot and dry summers and cold winters. The heat in the summer can be intense, often reaching over 100°F. There are also significant variations in elevation in the different vineyards, and even within the vineyards, which means that the grapes in the same vineyard can ripen at different times, sometimes  which means that they have multiple harvests even within the same vineyard. 

The Douro is also a very old winemaking region, considered one of the oldest in the world, with roots dating back more than 2000 years. The Romans are said to have brought winemaking to the area.. And, like in many places in Europe, religious orders, like Cisterian monks, made a lot of the wine starting around the mid-12th century. 

So, this is an area with an old, traditional, and challenging way of making wines, which is why the wines from the area are so unique and special, and we think need to be known better, particularly here in the United States.

And so, on that note, we need to learn more about this wine called Douro Tinto, and we have two Douro Tinto wines we are going to taste and review to get a sense for this wine and to see if either of them are worth your hard earned money . . . 

But first . . . we have to do our shameless plug.

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  • By the way, Dave Baxter on IG did send us a nice note. He bit the bullet and listened to the 20lb Gumball songs online. I told him that good Karma would come his way. Not to be outdone, we also got really nice notes from Timmysvino and East Idaho Foodies as well


And, as we do every week, we’ll tell you someone we think you should recommend The Wine Pair Podcast to - because the best way for us to grow listeners is when you tell your family and friends about us - and this week, we want you to recommend us to anyone who loves big, robust, full-bodied powerful wines, because they may want to check this wine out. 


RESEARCH ARTICLES AND LINKS FOR THIS EPISODE



Topic: WTF is Douro Tinto wine? 09:40

So, Carmela, let’s find out about just what the fuck Douro Tinto wine is. First, to explain the name of the wine, this is one of those wines named for the region, and not the grape - because, as we will learn in a minute, the wines can be a blend of many different grapes. Douro we have already established is the region, and Tinto means red in Portuguese, so that is important to know. 

Specifically, Douro Tinto refers to dry, unfortified red table wines that are produced in the Douro Valley - and this is an important distinction because the red wines that are most famous in the region, again, are fortified Port wines - which you can learn all about in our Port episode from this past Holiday time frame. Sometimes, the non-fortified wines from this region are just referred to simply as "Douro wines,” and "Douro Tinto" specifies the red ones. 

As we mentioned a minute ago, these wines are generally big, lush, robust, full-bodied, powerful, with lots of alcohol and tannins. There are lighter versions of the red wines, but in general, the most sought after wines from the regions are these big reds. These are what we would often call punch-you-in-the-face wines, which are not always our favorites, so you can take our tasting and review with that in mind. I will say, though, that these wines are also supposed to have a good balance of acidity as well, which is something we like because it means they should be good food wines. 

So, while these wines are often compared to big Napa Cabs and Syrahs from Washington State and Australia, they are also sometimes compared to bigger Italian wines because of their acidity. These wines are often called “steakhouse” red wines.

They are also generally deep, inky purple wines, and this comes from the thick grape skins, which are evidently made even thicker by the hot weather and water stress. 

As we mentioned a moment ago, these are blends, so you will only ever find Douro Tinto wines from Douro, and the blends are pretty unique to this area because they use mostly grapes generally only found in Portugal. On a side note, we have talked in the past about the sort of two classic French wine blends which are the backbone of a lot of modern wine - namely the Bordeaux-style blend and the GSM-style blend from the Rhone. Douro Tinto blends are neither of these because the blend is just different, but these would be more often compared to a Bordeaux-style blend because of the similarity to a big Cabernet-focused wines and blends.

The grapes generally used are Touriga Nacional, Touriga Franca, Tinta Roriz (which is the Portuguese name for the famous Spanish grape Tempranillo which is the backbone of Rioja wine), Tinta Barroca, and Tinto Cão. There are some producers who are starting to play with single variety wines, most often you will find that the wines are a blend. Blends can vary a ton by producer, year, etc. and there are no specific blending requirements to be called a Douro Tinto - no rules! - but in general you should expect to find that

  • Touriga Nacional generally makes up the biggest part of the blend, followed by Touriga Franca and Tinta Roriz (Tempranillo). If you are going to find a single varietal wine, it is likely to be Touriga Nacional
  • Tinta Barroca and Tinta Cão are usually used in smaller quantities. 
  • But, in total, there are about 50 different varietals that are allowed in the wine to still be considered legal or allowed under Portuguese wine laws


In terms of production, Portugal can be a blend of new and very traditional techniques.

  • Because of the steep terraces the grapes are on, and because the grapes can ripen at different times, they really can’t use machines, so they are basically always harvested by hand. Something they have done since winemaking started there. 
  • Generally, they still use good old traditional foot stomping, too, because they feel that machines are too aggressive and may break the seeds - which can impact the taste of wine in a bad way - which is funny, because I feel like toe-jam can probably affect the taste of a wine. But I digress. Fun fact, the higher-quality wines are generally still foot stomped. (Do you remember in the Port episode where we talked about robotic Port toes?)
  • They are using more modern steel tanks for fermentation these days, but they still use aging in oak barrels as a traditional way of making the wine and giving it a richer, smokier tase. 

Overall, though, you can more or less expect Douro reds are excellent values for their price compared to other similar wines from Spain or Bordeaux or Italy or Napa, and you should see this more in the middle to higher tier of wines in terms of price. So, wines $25 or more are going to likely see better value for their price in comparison. 

But now, I think we need to learn more about the wines we chose for this episode, what do you say, Carmela?!?


Douro Tinto Wines We Chose for This Episode 18:17

The wines we have chosen for this episode are under $25 on average, although one was just over that price cap and the other was a good chunk below it, and they should be relatively easy to find because I bought one at wine.com, and the other I bought, with great fear and trepidation, at Total Wine. I will also say, overall, finding specific wines from specific areas in Portugal I still find fairly confusing, so we have a lot to learn about Portuguese wine. In general, you should be able to Douro Tinto wines at any decently sized wine shop or in a wine shop that specializes in either European wines or, obviously Portuguese wine. As always, please go to your local wine shop and ask them if they have them or can get them for you, and they will. 

The first wine we are going to drink is the one I got at Total Wine and that is the 2019 Quinta das Carvalhas Douro Tinto. Evidently, this winery is owned by the Real Companhia Velha which is the oldest wine company in Portugal, dating back to 1756. By the way, in case you were wondering what Quinta means in Portuguese, because you see that many wineries are named after a Quinta and many wines have Quinta in it, it means “estate” or “farm. This is similar to the term Château in French, or Bodega or Finca in Spanish, or Tenuta in Italian, or Weingut in German. So there are some more fun facts you can use to wow your friends at your next dinner party!

The tech sheet for this wine says that the grapes come from various different parcels throughout the Quinta, even going so far as to say the grapes at the top of the mountain give the wine freshness and those at lower altitudes give power and structure. So, that follows from what we said earlier that the grapes in the same vineyard can vary greatly in lots of ways. 

The wine is fermented in stainless steel vats at a controlled temperature, and then aged in French barriques for 12 months, and 25% of the barriques are new oak. We like to repeat this information because it actually matters in wine, but French oak is more mellow than other oaks, and new oak is more oaky than used oak, but barriques are small barrels, so you will get more oakiness from wines aged in smaller barrels where the ratio of wine to barrel is smaller. 

They also say the wine is Vegan if that is important to you. And, this wine received a 92 rating from Wine Enthusiast.

The second wine we are going to drink is the 2021 Wine & Soul Manoella Douro Tinto, and this one we got at wine.com, and it also has a whole boatload of strong reviews including WA 92, WS 91, WE 90, JS 92. 

This wine has a bit of a broader blend of grapes - it is a blend of 60% Touriga Nacional, 25% Touriga Franca, 10% Tinta Roriz, and 5% Tinta Francisca. So, it is similar to the first wine in blend, but with a bit of Tinta Francisca blended in. From research on the interwebs, Tinta Francisca can add color, tannin, acidity, and a smoothness to the blend. The tech sheet also calls out that the soil is schist, which is cool to know. 

The wine is from the Quinta da Manoella vineyard in Douro and Wine & Soul winery is a boutique winery that was founded in 2001 by winemakers Sandra Tavares da Silva and Jorge Serôdio Borges who are highly regarded winemakers in Portugal. Their wines have been featured in Wine Spectator's Top 100, and they have been recognized for their contributions to modern winemaking in the Douro Valley. They are said to have an approach that blends traditional practices with more modern and innovative techniques. So, if this wine is good, it could be a killer bargain. 

The wine is fermented in stainless steel tanks as well, and is fermented for 8 days. They also call out on the tech sheet that it is foot stomped after it is fermented, so that’s cool, and they use malolactic fermentation, which again is a way to tamp down the acidity in a wine. It is also aged in French oak barriques, but for 16 months, so a bit longer than the first wine. These are going to be big oaky wines, I can just tell. And they age it for 2-3 years in bottle before they release it. 

Remember, you can find all of this information and more in our show notes on our website where we have links to tons of articles and videos that I use for research. 

But, I think that is enough information - let’s get to drinking! We’ll take a quick break and be right back. And, if you have these wines or similar wines, drink along with us to get some participation points, which you can trade-in for free stickers. You just need to send me an email with your mailing address, and I will get those “I drink with The Wine Pair Podcast” stickers over to you!

LINKS TO SOURCES FOR THESE SPECIFIC WINES



2019 Quinta das Carvalhas Douro Tinto, 2021 Wine & Soul Manoella Douro Tinto Wine Tasting, Pairing, and Review 25:45

Wine: Quinta das Carvalhas Douro Tinto
Region: Portugal, Douro
Year: 2019
Price: $16.99
Retailer: Total Wine
Alcohol: 14%
Grapes: 60% Touriga Nacional, 20% Touriga Franca, 40% Tinta Roriz
Professional Rating: WE 92 Vivino 4.0

What we tasted and smelled in this Quinta das Carvalhas Douro Tinto:

  • Color: Dark, inky purple. Opaque
  • On the nose: Fig Newton, prune, plum, fig jam, candied, fresh squeeze cherry juice, grapey, pepper, smoke, leather, earthy
  • In the mouth: Juicy, big, bold, good mouthfeel, good grippy tannins, not complex, nice tasting, sweet, fig, plum, dried fruit, concentrated, raisin, dried currant, rich


Food to pair with this Quinta das Carvalhas Douro Tinto: Thick, juicy teak, steak sandwich, grilled meat, a steakhouse wine
 
As a reminder on our rating scale, we rate on a scale of 1-10, with no half points, where 7 and above means that we would buy it, and 4 and below means that we are likely to pour it down the sink, and a 5 or 6 means we are likely to drink it and finish it, but we are probably not going to buy it. 

Quinta das Carvalhas Douro Tinto Wine Rating: 

  • Joe: 7/10
  • Carmela: 7/10


Wine: Wine & Soul Manoella Douro Tinto (Click here to find this wine on wine.com. We may be compensated if you purchase)
Region: Portugal, Douro
Year: 2021
Price: $26.99
Retailer: wine.com
Alcohol: 13.5%
Grapes: 60% Touriga Nacional, 25% Touriga Franca, 10% Tinta Roriz, 5% Tinta Francisca
Professional Rating:WA 92, WS 91, WE 90, JS 92  Vivino 4.0

What we tasted and smelled in this Wine & Soul Manoella Douro Tinto:

  • Color: Not as dark, not opaque or as inky, but pretty and dark, and shimmers in glass
  • On the nose: Cherry, plum, blackberry pie, fireworks, gunpowder
  • In the mouth: Smooth, cherry, Hostess berry pie, baking spice, fresh fruit, good acidity, very nice, juicy


Food to pair with this Wine & Soul Manoella Douro Tinto: Versatile, red meat, bolognese, pot roast, beef stroganoff, pork, charcuterie, stinky cheese, Italian sandwich, meat over an open grill

Wine & Soul Manoella Douro Tinto Wine Rating: 

  • Joe: 8/10
  • Carmela: 8/10


Which one of these are you finishing tonight?

  • Carmela: Wine & Soul Manoella Douro Tinto
  • Joe: Wine & Soul Manoella Douro Tinto



Taste profiles expected from Douro Tinto 37:22

  • General 
    • Nose: blackberry, blackcurrant, black pepper, cloves, and cinnamon. Vanilla, toast, and smokiness from oak aging is common. 
    • Taste: ripe black fruits, spice, licorice, anise, crisp minerality, firm tannins, big body, long finish
  • Quinta das Carvalhas Douro Tinto
    • Winery: A very fresh wine, with a beautiful ruby colour and aromas of red fruit harmoniously integrated with creamy vanilla notes, demonstrating notable aromatic intensity and complexity. Very balanced and round, resulting in a very pleasant and long lasting finish.
    • JS: Bark and dried earth notes to the rich blackberries and dried-herb character. Juicy and medium- to full-bodied on the palate, with ripe fruit and nicely chewy tannins.
    • WE: this is a ripely perfumed wine. With dense black fruits and tannins that have now softened leaving a a ripe, generous wine with blackberry fruits.
  • Wine & Soul Manoella Douro Tinto
    • JS: his is showing aromas of currants, raspberries, chopped herbs and paprika. It’s crunchy and lively with a medium body, fine-grained tannins and a spicy, bright finish.
    • WS: A stylish red, fresh and focused, with good concentration while remaining light on its feet. Features fine, taut tannins and lively acidity, which provide sleek definition for notes of crushed black raspberry and cracked pink peppercorn. Delivers a fragrant overtone of Mediterranean scrub and subtle, minerally iron tang on the finish.


Verdict on Douro Tinto  39:22


Really liked it, and a great wine drinking and entertaining. Carmela really liked the wine even though big red wines are generally not her bag. Not super oaky which is really nice for a big red wine. Well balanced


Outro and how to find The Wine Pair Podcast 40:15

Ok, so, Carmela, it’s time for us to go, but before we do, we want to thank you very much for listening to us - and if you haven’t done so yet, now would be the perfect time to follow or subscribe to our podcast and also a fantastic time to leave us a nice rating and review on our website or Apple podcasts or other podcast app - and it is an awesome and free way to support us and help us grow listeners.

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