Coelheiros Vinha do Taco 2010

-

 Tasted in a particularly nice atmosphere in the middle of an evening dominated by Italian wines, this Portuguese Petit Verdot from the Alentejo region has stood out to me due to its deep body and tremendous complexity revealing some green herbal notes allied to pleasant tertiary flavours such as coffee and tobacco leafs. 

Even though it is a thirteen year old wine, it has still shown some vibrant acidity revealing that it is still fit for some more years in the bottle. 

Still, there was a question which has assaulted me yesterday: how much of the taste of the wines was influenced by the fact that they were being drunk in the cellar of an iconic historical building surrounded by bottles charmingly stored in cages? The attention and knowledge of the person responsible for our group also played an important role in the general atmosphere of the evening. 

I am often confronted with customers who can swear that the exactly same wine tasted absolutely different in a different setting. Even some who say that when they have tried a certain wine with me and home it was already something else. 

Of course place, music, the people with whom you drink it as well as the positioning of the planets may condition your experience and, somehow, I find it quite a good thing as each time you taste it is a unique experience.

Only released in extraordinarily good years and with a maturation process of six and a half years this is a wine with a tremendous potential and one of those that you will hardly forget about.


18,5/20
Country: Portugal
Region: Alentejo
Grapes: Petit Verdot
15%
Winemaker: Luís Patrao

Website:https://www.coelheiros.pt/pt/vinhos/vinha-do-taco/coelheiros-vinha-do-taco/

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Luckert Müller-Thurgau 2021

-
Image
 There are grapes which tend to be seen as not prestigious as others.  Müller-Thurgau is, somehow, one of them. Created by the Swiss Hermann Müller as a crossing between Riesling and Madeilene Royale, it is still associated with low quality half-dry wines which were tremendously popular in Germany during the 70s and 80s.  Even though a long time has passed since then, it is interesting to see how most customers politely deny my recommendation whenever I do it.  In fact, it is quite hard to sell it to people aged between 30 and 50 as it may recall some bad memories of wine they may have tried with their parents.  The most positive side of it is that younger generations do start having a different approach to it, specially due to its flexibility to match spicy dishes and more exotic cuisine.  And that's exactly where this Müller-Thurgau has shown a tremendous depth with elegant ripe apples, nutmeg and a slight smoky note which made it tremendously interesting...
Read more

Guado al Tasso 2021

-
Image
 Last Tuesday I was at a wine fair promoted by one of the biggest German wine importers at one of the premium hotels in Hamburg. With a strong focus on gastronomy and small shops it was quite a mixed public, quite different in many ways to the habitués of masterclasses. Besides the tremendous offer, there was a couple of episodes which are still living inside me and that I would like to share.  The first one, I was at a South African stand and a man behind me pushed me and screamed to the person behind the stand that he wanted to try the Shyraz. I have quickly shared with him that he should try the amazing Pinotage before the Shyraz as it was surprisingly light and fruit driven. As an answer I got a lecture on how he was working for more than 50 years in the wine business and that there was nothing I could teach him about it. I have smiled and moved away. On another stand I have asked the person responsible for it if the Ribera del Duero that I was trying was a single graped T...
Read more

AOP Maury Ambré Louanges 1932 Chateau de L'Ou

-
Image
 How important is the history of a wine? Even though I always assume the challenge of trying to be impartial in my personal evaluation of a wine, I also have to confess that I barely achieve such goal as I tend to let myself seduce by all kinds of extra information which may influence my tasting. I am just too sensitive to the worlds you can build around a particular world which is a bottle of wine. Going directly to the wine in question, the fact that it was a 1932 harvest has directly awoken in me an almost uncontrollable world of expectations. Tasted at a recent event of Wines of Roussillon in Hamburg it came as the biggest highlight of a very eventful evening.  Composed of Grenache Gris and Grenache Blanc it has revealed nice dried apricots, dates and some bitter almonds coated by an acidity which imposed a tremendous freshness to a wine which is over 90 years old.  In a way, it presented itself fresher than a 2002 tasted right before. Only having been bottled in 2022...
Read more