Like Pinot Grigio, only more so, Portugal’s Vinho Verde is one of those risky white wines that fail more often than they triumph. Even half a century ago, when it was quite fashionable to drink it, this sour, fizzy wine summed up what the French like to call vin ordinaire. But whereas plenty of vin ordinaire is perfectly drinkable, the trouble with Vinho Verde was that so much of it wasn’t.
It was never a reason for going to Portugal - the red wines were usually better - though they did sometimes (not often) seem to enhance the salty food. I have only once been on a Portuguese wine-tasting trip, up the Douro valley, where the scenery was as wonderful as it needed to be. A distinguished colleague, whom I shall not name, spent much of his time mixing his wines and swirling the result, to see if he could make them taste better. The improvement, he claimed, was marginal.
Today, circumstances have changed, though not, on the evidence of Marks and Spencer’s Tapada de Villar, very beneficially. The fizz is still there - other producers have reduced it to a mere prickle - but with its low alcohol content (ten and a half per cent) the effect is like mineral water, with instant cut-off in terms of after-taste.
There is nothing fundamentally wrong with low-alcohol wines - the Germans know how to make delicious ones - but this one, not cheap at £8 a bottle, seems to me to have little to offer.
6 May 2015
It was never a reason for going to Portugal - the red wines were usually better - though they did sometimes (not often) seem to enhance the salty food. I have only once been on a Portuguese wine-tasting trip, up the Douro valley, where the scenery was as wonderful as it needed to be. A distinguished colleague, whom I shall not name, spent much of his time mixing his wines and swirling the result, to see if he could make them taste better. The improvement, he claimed, was marginal.
Today, circumstances have changed, though not, on the evidence of Marks and Spencer’s Tapada de Villar, very beneficially. The fizz is still there - other producers have reduced it to a mere prickle - but with its low alcohol content (ten and a half per cent) the effect is like mineral water, with instant cut-off in terms of after-taste.
There is nothing fundamentally wrong with low-alcohol wines - the Germans know how to make delicious ones - but this one, not cheap at £8 a bottle, seems to me to have little to offer.
6 May 2015
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