Quinta de Vale de Pios - Pios Excomungado 2015

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

Soil Type(s): Cambrian vertical black schist soils with high pH and extraordinary availability of minerals and drainage.

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

Joaquim Almeida at Quinta de Vale de Pios in the Douro, Portugal makes traditional wines and puts his own twist on some of them. 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. Essentially, he 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