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More wines available from Quinta Do Crasto
750ml
Bottle:
$52.94
An especially dark and dense Colheita Tawny, this has great richness and a fine balance between the fruit and the...
750ml
Bottle:
$32.63
Lemon in colour, with light golden hues. Expressive on the nose, with citrus aromas, delicate floral notes and a...
750ml
Bottle:
$49.94
A creamy, harmonious red, with a generous range of ripe black plum, black currant, dried mint and dried fig, loamy...
750ml
Bottle:
$23.94
$24.50
This is opening up already, with a hint of dark earth infusing the core of plum cake and blackberry preserve flavors....
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Winery
Quinta Do Crasto
Vintage: 2012
2012 has, so far been a positive year for wineries around the world. While it may be a little too early to speak of the wines being made in the northern hemisphere, European and North American wineries have already begun reporting that their harvesting season has been generally very good, and are predicting to continue with the kind of successes they saw in 2011. However, 2012 has been something of a late year for France, due to unpredictable weather throughout the summer, and the grapes were ripening considerably later than they did in 2011 (which was, admittedly, an exceptionally early year). French wineries are claiming, though, that this could well turn out to be advantageous, as the slow ripening will allow the resulting wines to express more flavour and features of the terroir they are grown in.
The southern hemisphere has seen ideal climatic conditions in most of the key wine producing countries, and Australia and New Zealand particularly had a superb year, in particular with the Bordeaux varietal grapes that grow there and which love the humidity these countries received plenty of. Also enjoying a fantastic year for weather were wineries across Argentina and Chile, with the Mendoza region claiming that 2012 will be one of their best vintages of the past decade. Similar claims are being made across the Chilean wine regions, where Sauvignon Blanc and Cabernet Sauvignon had an especially good year. These two grape varietals also produced characterful wines on the coastal regions of South Africa this year.
Region: Douro
The Douro valley in Portugal has long been one of Europe's most important and unique wine regions, with a history which stretches back over two thousand years to when Pheonician tradesmen and settlers first began planting grapevines in the rich and fertile soil found there. The region itself is something of an ideal location for viticulture, with mineral rich soils and plenty of moisture from the river, alongside long, baking hot summers which help the grapes reach full ripeness. Wineries in the Douro utilize a wide range of grape varietals for their distinctive and characterful wines, including red varietals such as Tinta Barroca, Tinta Roriz and Tinta Cao, and delightful white varietals such as Gouveio and the increasingly popular Viosinho. However, it is for the fortified wines of Porto which Douro is most famous for, and these are widely considered to be amongst the finest fortified wines in the world.
Country: Portugal
Portugal has been an important center for wine production ever since the Phoenicians and Carthaginians discovered that the many native grape varietals that grow in the country could be cultivated for making excellent wines. After all, Portugal has something of an ideal wine producing climate and terrain; lush green valleys, dry, rocky mountainsides and extremely fertile soil helped by long, hot summers and Atlantic winds. Today, such a climate and range of terroir produces an impressive variety of wines, with the best wines said to be coming out of the Douro region, the Alentejo and the Colares region near Lisbon. Portugal has an appellation system two hundred years older than France's, and much effort is made by regulating bodies to ensure that the quality of the country's produce remains high, and the wines remain representative of the regions they are grown in.