{"id":12899,"date":"2015-10-08T06:20:34","date_gmt":"2015-10-08T06:20:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/?p=12899"},"modified":"2015-10-08T06:22:44","modified_gmt":"2015-10-08T06:22:44","slug":"in-the-douro-2-quinta-do-vale-dona-maria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/portugal\/in-the-douro-2-quinta-do-vale-dona-maria","title":{"rendered":"In the Douro (2) Quinta Vale Dona Maria"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"OLYMPUS<\/p>\n

Two very interesting visits yesterday: Vale Dona Maria<\/a> and Niepoort. There’s something nice about unhurried appointments. It takes the pressure off: you don’t need to gather the maximum information in the shortest time, and you can have a good look around. It’s surprising how the conversation turns, and what you learn. So it was nice to have quality time with Cristiano Van Zeller at Vale Dona Maria, which has been going since 1996. It’s the first time I’d tasted through the range in a while, and it has expanded. As well as the Quinta wine, he’s also got three\u00a0high end bottlings. The Vinha Francisca comes from younger (10 year old) vines, with a high proportion of Sousao, and it’s structured and linear. The Vinha do Rio is a dense yet silky, suave high end bottling that has bags of Douro character. And we tried a cask sample of a new micro cuvee from 2014. The 2013s are very good, although the Quinta wine is currently a little subdued. The 2012s are pretty amazing. Good news: 2015 is very exciting, and it will certainly be a full declaration year for vintage Port. We tried quite a few of the 2015s at their current embryonic stage, and they looked great. 2014 will be a more mixed general picture because of harvest rains, but anything picked before the rains – as 2014 cask samples here showed – will be quite exciting.<\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS
\n\"OLYMPUS<\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two very interesting visits yesterday: Vale Dona Maria and Niepoort. There’s something nice about unhurried appointments. It takes the pressure off: you don’t need to gather the maximum information in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,7],"tags":[362,350],"class_list":["post-12899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-douro","category-portugal","tag-douro","tag-portugal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12899"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12920,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12899\/revisions\/12920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}