Dão Varietals from Taboadella

Taboadella has 40 hectares of vineyards in the Dão region lying on high triangular plateau at 400 - 530 m altitude just south of Satão. The property belongs to the Amorim family who also one Quinta Nova Nossa Sra. do Carmo in the Douro. In the 1980s the vineyard was partially replanted, with Tinta Roriz and Encruzado, Cerceal-Branco and Borrado das Moscas (Bical) being introduced. The average age of the vines is 30 years but some vines are centenarian. The vineyard is divided into 18 parcels, none of them irrigated. It is these that provide for this range of site-specfic varietal wines from numbered vineyard parcels which are displayed on the labels. The soils are relatively shallow but easily worked quartz-granite, with low water retention capacity. I have only tasted one Taboadella wine before, a red, that I felt was rather over-oaked. These wines are in more traditional Dão-style and considerably more restrained. My feeling overall was they the varietal reds, while fascinating to taste, are a bit simplistic and that blended wines are the way forward for Dão.

Taboadella Encruzado 2021 ***/****

Apples and pears on the nose with a touch of creamy oak influence from short ageing in new French oak, similarly fresh and crisp in style on the palate, taut and a touch extractive mid-palate with fresh apple and pear flavours on an elegant steely finish. 16.5

Taboadella Jean Reserva 2020 **

Mid-deep in colour with a rather earthy nose initially (potatoes – perhaps a bad bottle?) which dissipated in the glass to reveal herbal fruit both on the nose and palate, firm, quite lean in the traditional Dão style with a dusting of new oak and good acidity but the weakest of the wines here in my opinion. 13

Taboadella Touriga Nacional Reserva 2020 ***

Mid-deep crimson; fine fragant, floral aromas, typical of Touriga Nacional but quite restrained, spring flowers with a green, herbal edge; well-defined with fresh blueberry falours, linear in style with just a hint of oak. Typically firm, gravelly tannins extending onto the finish. 15.5

Taboadella Alfrocheiro Reserva 2020 ***/****

Mid-deep in colour with attractive, tight knit berry fruit aromas and flavours, spicy too, fresh and lively with some depth mid-palate and backed by firm, gravelly tannins and inherent astringency on the finish. Perhaps the most successful of the red trio. 16.5