best portuguese reds and best qpr

Just looking for thoughts on what people feel are some of the best Portuguese red wines, and best qpr, excluding port.

Here are some of my votes from my limited experience.

Luis Seabra Vinhos - Tinto Xisto Cru

QPR
Quinta do Vallado Touriga Nacional
Quinta do Vallado Field Blend Reserva

Seabra is great.

In addition to that, Quinta do Infantado, a very good Port producer, also makes a red that’s a killer QPR. FitaPreta is also quite good.

I’ve really liked several vintages of Quinta de Cabriz Dao. It’s quite inexpensive. I also like the Niepoort Rotulo.

Paging Tomás Costa. Mr. Costa, please report to this thread.

From somewhat recent bottles (last couple of years): Alves de Sousa Douro Abandonado, Luis Pato Vinha Velha Vinha Barrosa, Quinta do Pôpa Douro Vinhas Velhas, Niepoort Poeirinho.

Best: Quinta do Vale Meão

QPR: many options from Dão

Have always loved the nice QPR wines from Aphros (reds especially), as they opened my eyes to the massive potential of the Vinhao grape.

For a bit off the beaten path, Quinta de Arcosso makes incredible wines in Tras-os-Montes that I always forget I need to buy and stick a few in my cellar for a decade.

Definitely second Luis Pato and Luis Seabra and would add Caves Sao Joao for wonderful QPR aged wines. You can find their cabernet and white blends from the 90’s in the States for $40 or so. In Lisbon, of course, those same bottles are like $20.

I like to drink those within a few weeks or when they’re first released.

Casa de Saima’s Bairrada Reserva is a stunning QPR … if you can find it.

Quinta Vale do Meão “Meandro” is my QPR pick.

This. Their Tonel 10 is also a wonderful wine and even cheaper. (Off topic, their white Vinhas Velhas is a sensational value and ages really well).

In a somewhat similar vein, Sidonio de Sousa. Their Vinho d’Autor 2005 is one of the best Portuguese reds I’ve ever tasted.

Whilst I don’t believe in ‘best’ or even ‘best qpr’ (our palates will be different enough to discount those terms), I’ve certainly found some wines very much to my taste, generally (but not exclusively) in the cooler regions. If your tastes lean (oops!) in a similar direction, then maybe try some from these:

• Quinta da Soalheiro for various Vinho Verde wines, and I’ve enjoyed each I’ve tried
• Sidonio de Sousa (reserva and also the garrafeira)
• Luis Pato (again they’ve been enjoyable across the range, but I’ve not tried the most expensive reds)
• Quinta da Bacalhao surprised me, feeling like a cross between a lunchtime claret and a sangiovese (a half case of the 1983 drunk mostly in 2010)
• Niepoort Redoma for a warmer climate red (but far from OTT and it does age well)
• Adega da Cartuxa Évora Cartuxa (the barnyard funk being to my tastes, but not everyone’s)
• Dão, but I’ve definitely had a hit and miss experience. Most recently Álvaro Castro Dão Reserva impressed, but rather too many have been overpowered by vanilla oak flavours. Going back about 20 years though, a friend / local wine trader has come across a few cases of a Dão whose name I never wrote down. He thought it might be shot, but brought a bottle along to a wine tasting evening. We loved it. He was selling it at £3 a bottle, so we bought half a case, which was a rare ‘bulk’ purchase for us in those days. We should have bought at least a full case, probably more. Another with barnyard complexity that’s not to everyone’s taste, but was a joy for us.
• Colares if you like a lean long-distance runner of a wine.
• Also worth trying a Moscatel de Setubal if the chance ever arises.

Portugal is the opposite of Burgundy: if you’re really knowledgeable, and you know where to look, you might just find bad deals and poor QPR.

As a Portuguese I find it hard to comment on this thread from a US based perspective, since i’m not exactly sure what goes abroad. I would second all the recommendations that have been made so far and add a few more off the top of my head:

Herdade do Mouchão’s wines are probably the only ones that have seamlessly bridged the gap between ‘traditional’ winemaking (which in Portugal of the old days meant earthy, highly extracted and in need of long cellaring) and the modern paradigm. Their cellar and winemaking practices remain relatively un-technological. These are gravel soils similar to those in many left bank Bordeaux proprieties, and mostly planted to a grape variety that always played second fiddle in its native France, but arguably has reached its greatest heights in the Alentejo: Alicante Bouschet. Part of the house style is the use of macacauba wood, which has a different flavor profile from both French and American oak.

I have always loved the wines from Tapada de Coelheiros, which are still drinking fantastically down to the very first vintage (1991). They are unquestionably part of a trend, now out of fashion, for Portuguese winemakers to plant French grape varieties as part of modernization efforts. These wines blend cab sauv with Alentejo grapes like Trincadeira and Aragonês, and drink a lot like Bordeaux’s Iberian cousins. I doubt any of the old releases are available in the US, but the newer ones might be.

Rita Marques’ Conceito wines strike that balance between elegant drinkability and Douro character for me. Sort of venn diagram wines between hedonists and lovers of restraint, in my view, with their satin-y textures that are luscious yet ‘feminine’.

I don’t believe my friendship with Carlos Lucas makes me biased towards his wines from Quinta do Ribeiro Santo (Dão). These are relatively large production but consistently chiseled and refined across the entirety of the price range and portfolio. He’s mostly known for his whites, but the red Grande Reserva is beautiful: perfumed, savory, very ‘old world’. Some of his other top reds are a bit bulkier.

You can safely buy anything out of Taboadella, Luísa Amorim’s megaproject in the Dão. The facilities are top notch, the investment is grandiose, and the winemaker is the brilliant Jorge Alves, the man who is also responsible for the Quanta Terra project (excellent Douro wines, though on the burly side) and Luísa Amorim’s remaining projects (Quinta Nova in the Douro, and Herdade Aldeia de Cima in the Alentejo). The reason I single out Taboadella is that I love the Dão, and I can sense from the wines that Jorge (who is very much a Douro local) loves it too.

Posters above have already mentioned a number of excellent Bairrada producers, but I’d like to add Quinta das Bágeiras and Kompassus. Bágeiras’ Mário Sérgio is a champagne nut whose bubbles are the closest to a champagne doppelganger that Bairrada espumante can get, but his reds are all Baga character, just the way we like it: crunchy, earthy, with modest ABV. You could lay down his red Reserva for less than 10€ a bottle. As for Kompassus, the wines are made by Anselmo Mendes, so 'nuff said.

Others have already mentioned Quinta da Gaivosa, from veteran winemaker Domingos Alves de Sousa. While Abandonado, Vinha do Lordelo and Reserva Pessoal are big and mean, the base Quinta da Gaivosa is consistently more elegant. 2017 is smokin’, but already running out even over here. The other great producer in the Baixo Corgo subregion of the Douro would be Quinta do Côtto. I’m partial to their Vinha do Dote bottling, which is a beautiful expression of the more humid, cooler climate of that specific parcel/terroir, fine to either drink now or age for a decade or two and carrying a very modest price tag.

The Beira Interior is the up and coming region around here, and the producers to look out for would be Quinta da Biaia (from the hugely talented young winemaker Luis Leocádio) and Quinta dos Termos (from the veteran Virgílio Loureiro). Biaia has very high altitude vineyards resulting in wines that are remarkably fresh, firm and structured. The 2017 Reserva is another bottle you can grab for less than 20€ that will go twenty years: everything is amped up in a way that is decidedly serious and has little sexiness to it. Quinta dos Termos’ wines are perhaps more consensual, but impeccably balanced.

I have managed to completely skip the Tejo and Lisbon regions, which is a huge deficit on my part! Their wines are better than ever and I need to dig deeper into them outside the very well known producers. It might not look like it, but there is a lot more wine being made in Portugal than I’m aware of…

I’ve had 3 bottles of the Redoma 96 during the past 3 or 4 years, and they have all been great. Mature, complex and very interesting. I’m also a great fan of all things Pato. His single vineyard wines are great with 15 years of age (but can be drunk with pleasure younger). He also has a gifted winemaker daughter.

And thank you to Tomás Costa for a great answer. A couple of these wines are available in Norway and I will be on the lookout for them. I see the Mouchão Ponte Tinto 2018 is easily available.

My pleasure! Ponte and Dom Rafael, however, are Mouchão’s breadwinners: sleek, quite approachable sort of daily drinkers. The greatness (and unique house signature) lies in the Herdade do Mouchão straight label, and, if one is willing to invest bigger funds, in the Tonel 3-4 (the world’s greatest Alicante Bouschet varietal? I’m wondering what other obvious candidates there might be).

I’m willing, and am aware from a price point that this wil be a daily drinker. Will be on a lookout for highest end cuvees. The straight Tinto 2014 seem to be available.

I see that the Taboadella is currently sold out and have set me up for a mail reminder if it become available again.

A relatively easy to find brand is Casa Ferrerinha. Can’t go wrong with any of their wines, even the inexpensive ones.

I disagree. There are a lot of wines I prefer to Esteva and Papa Figos within that price range. One partially pays for the Ferreirinha premium.

I agree. But those may not be able to easily find, or at not at all, here in the states

The one Portuguese table wine that I collect is Herdade do Mouchao. I have a complete vertical going back to 2004 with many examples from the 1990’s as well.
Also lately been taken by FitaPreta and the Azores Wine Company. Quinta da Pellada Carrosel is a long time favorite. I really like Filipa Pato as well. Her 3B is my bargain rose sparkling. I’ve also lately been drinking lots of Quinta da Fonte Souto tinto and branco as bargain wines. Made by the Symingtons and easy to get in the States. If I can find them, Quevedo’s Oscar’s branco and rose and Claudia’s tinto are great bargains as well.