Quinta de Vale de Pios- Excomungado 2018

Vintage: 2018
Varietals: 25% Touriga Nacional, 25% Touriga Franca, 25% Tinta Cão, 25% Tinta Roriz
Appellation: Douro DOC
Sulphur (SO2): 107ppm, 29ppm free
Sugar: Dry
Acid: 4.06 g/L
pH: 3.95
Production Size: 40,000 bottles
Altitude: 325m (1066ft)
Vineyard Age: 20 years
Residual Sugar: 0.7 g/L
Tannin: Elevated
Alcohol %: 13.5

Soil Types:
Cambrian vertical black schist soils with high pH and extraordinary availability of minerals and drainage.

Joaquim farms without certification, but is essentially organic. Douro is surprisingly an extremely easy place to farm organically. Manual harvest, manual sorting.

Spontaneous fermentation. Stem inclusion, 18 months aging in stainless steel, no oak.

In the Douro, when making dry red wine it is traditional to use native traditional grapes and most often a healthy dose of oak in the process. Joaquim decided to challenge status quo and make a red wine without de-stemming and without oak.The “Excomungado” bottling represents Joaquim’s youngest wines produced with no oak aging and stem inclusion to extract tannin and power in this young vine. You can really only pull this off if you have extremely healthy and pure berries. The outcome is a highly fruit-tannin driven wine without the normal woody characteristic. As he puts it, "I created a hipster wine in a place there are no hipsters, just hip replacements!"

Beef Stew, Braised Beef, Filet Mignon, Strip Steak, Venison, Lean cuts of beef

• Portuguese, Brazilian, Argentine, American