Quinta da Pellada Muleta 2020
Region: Dão
Producer: Quinta de Saes - da Pellada
The nose is very elegant, slightly floral, with notes of wild fruits and mentholated touches. On the palate, fresh fruit and spice flavours are wrapped in a refreshing mineral profile. The wine has good volume on the palate, without being heavy, offering a fragrant, long and very balanced finish.
Alvaro Castro perfectly embodies the essence of The Portugal Collection. At the end of 2018, Alvaro Castro harvested his 30th vintage as an independent winegrower. We have been following him since 2003 and consider him to be one of Portugal's key winemakers, a player in the qualitative renaissance of Portuguese wines, if only because he has, almost single-handedly, put the Dão region back on the map. He has been assisted by his daughter Maria for several years. Their elegant wines make the region shine like in the good old days. His vineyards are located in the Dao region, on a granite terroir on a mountain plateau at an altitude of 450m.
Alvaro's more accessible vintages are marketed under the label of Quinta de Saes, while it bottles distinguished wines for laying down under the name Quinta da Pelleda.
| Volume | 75.0 cl. |
| Grape Variety | field blend |
| Drinking window | 2022-2035 |
| Alc. | 13.0% |
| Vinification | in lagar, by gravity , minimal intervention, fermentation with indigenous yeasts. |
| Ripening | in used 225L barrels, no filtration before bottling. |
Waar serveer je ’m bij?
A vineyard over a hundred years old that barely yields grapes any more, but what it gives is exceptional. Fermented in a lagar, aged in used oak casks, and otherwise interfered with as little as possible — Alvaro Castro lets the site speak. Complexity fourteen at a weight of eleven: you taste more than you carry, and that is the whole reason this bottle exists.
Sweetbreads with peas and mint
Saddle of venison with parsnip and juniper
Serveren op 16–17 °C, an hour in a decanter
Drink: 2024–2034
“The 2020 Muleta is a super classical red and is incredible. It has to be like the wines from 50 years ago—austere, serious, nuanced, elegant and subtle. This has a majority of Jaen and Baga. The vines from the Muleta vineyard, in the north-facing slopes of Mondego, are dying, and they had to resort to using some grapes from other vineyards to complement them; they have three plots that are almost 100 years old. This matured in seven-year-old 225-liter French oak barrels for 15 months. It has a very balanced palate, with fine-grained tannins. They opened a 2013 for me to see the good rusticity this wine has and how it evolves into something elegant, like the ugly duckling... which was not really ugly. It is a wine for the table and for the cellar, as it evolves very slowly.”
Alvaro Castro ruilde Lissabon en een diploma burgerlijk ingenieur in voor Pinhanços, aan de voet van de Serra da Estrela, en zette haast in zijn eentje de Dão weer op de kaart. Op Quinta de Saes en Quinta da Pellada maakt hij wijnen met fijne tannines, een frisse kern en veel lengte. Wij volgen hem sinds 2003.
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