Wine of the Week – a friendly and great value Douro red

I love the wines from the Douro Valley in Portugal. This beautiful part of the world is an isolated, harsh, arid landscape that produces fabulous world class wines, as well as Ports. The wines tend to be red, but some lovely whites are made too. Douro wines are usually very high quality and although they can be pretty expensive, they generally deliver very good value for the quality that you get.

Map of the Douro – click for a larger view – non watermarked PDF versions are available by agreement. Quinta do Noval is marked, just north of Pinhão.

Recently I have presented a couple of tastings on the wines of the Douro, which were very well received indeed and I will write about those soon. In the meantime I tasted a red wine from the Douro that delivered a huge amount of pleasure at a very good price, so I have made it my Wine of the Week.

Quinta do Noval.

2013 Lot 20 Douro Grande Reserva
DOC Douro
Douro Valley
Portugal

My normal go to good value Douro red wine is the Altano Organic – and which is currently on offer from Waitrose at just £7.99 – which I like very much, but this is another terrific wine that hows what the region can do at a very good price. It is a limited production wine – just 41,000 bottles – and forms part of Aldi’s Lot Series, which contains some other very good wines.

This Douro Valley red is a blend of three of the most important local grapes; Touriga Nacional, Touriga Franca and Tinta Roriz (Tempranillo) and is made for Aldi by Quinta do Noval, which is one of the most famous and respected producers of Ports and table wines in the region. I recently showed their excellent 2010 Cedro do Noval and magnificent 2007 Quinta do Noval at a tasting and they were really appreciated.

The view from my room at Quinta do Nova a couple of years ago. The closest building is the winery.

The colour is a deep red, while the nose offers ripe black and red fruits together with liquorice, sweet spice and black pepper. The palate is incredibly fruity with black cherry, blackberry, plum, chocolate, pepper, wild herbs, a touch of spice and supple, smooth tannins. This is a wine that is clearly made to be drunk young. It is very soft, fruity, quite rich, herbal and spicy which makes it very attractive and easy to drink – 88/100 points.

Available in the UK from Aldi for £9.99 per bottle – a case of 6 bottles  is £59.94 and delivered for free.

This is a delicious wine that shows some of the flavour profile the Douro region gives, but a a very good price and in a very drinkable style, it’s well worth a try.