Wine Advisor
Quinta do Noval, Nacional Vintage Port 2016
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Description
Quinta do Noval, Vintage Port, Porto, Nacional, Douro, Red, 2001
Tasting notes
Reviewed by: Mark Squires
The 2016 Vintage Port "Nacional" is a field blend, mostly Touriga Nacional, Touriga Franca, Tinto Cão, Sousão and Tinta Roriz, aged for 18 months in old wood. It comes in at 85 grams of residual sugar and was bottled April 13, 2018. This is plainly more intense than the regular Noval (not unusual), but that's not the most impressive feature. It is more impressive for the lifted fruit than the power. The fruit is carefully defined, precisely carved out of the mid-palate slab. The silky texture gives this a different demeanor than the regular Noval too, while the beautiful fruit has a different flavor profile. It is more red fruits than blue—it has far less Touriga Nacional, said winemaker Carlos Agrellos. It has more bright flavors like raspberries than plums. It adds that tannic pop and wonderful balance too. It is still oddly approachable—if you're a masochist, of course, and for the moment. It will be intriguing to see how this develops. It should close down pretty hard. Then, it will age gracefully for decades. Will it make people forget about that amazing nose on the regular Noval? Time will tell. No pricing was set in the USA as of this writing.
About the Producer
Quinta do Noval is one of the oldest and leading wineries producing Port wine. Among the top port producers, Bird Park is even more distinguished by the fact that its grapes are picked from a single vineyard. Notably, the winery is known for producing Portugal’s best port wine, “Nacional”, a blend from a single vineyard of old vines in the domestic Touriga Nacional. Likewise, the winery also produces high-quality dry red wines from Portugal, the most anticipated wines from the Douro region, showing unparalleled depth and concentration, as well as rich fruit and spice. trait. "Douro" means gold and gold in Portuguese, so the Douro River is also called the Golden River Valley. The Bird Park is located in Pinhao Village, the most central part of the Douro River region. The winery now has about 247 acres of vineyards. The Bird Park was created in 1715, originally owned and operated by the Rebello Valente family for over a century, and passed on to Viscount Vilar D'Allen by marriage in the early 19th century , a man with a passion for wild dances. In the 1880s, due to phylloxera damage, like other local wineries, Bird Garden was also for sale. In 1894, it was sold to Antonio Jose da Silva, a famous local businessman, who replanted the grape The estate was reborn, and his son-in-law, Luiz Vasconcelos Porto, took over the management and has been managing the winery for nearly 30 years. Louis vigorously carried out reforms, widening the width of the terraces, increasing the light and the convenience of field operations, which is a great reform even by today's technical standards, and promoted the winery with the help of Cambridge, Oxford and other clubs to enhance the reputation of the winery. Bird Garden's reputation continued to improve, and the 1931 vintage was an iconic one. Due to the world economic downturn at the time, orders for Port wine fell sharply. During the year, only three wine merchants continued to operate. Bird Garden was the The only Portuguese producer at the time with continuous exports to the Anglo-American market.
