The Dão has improved enormously over the past 30 years, with the best wines now making good on their considerable promise, says Richard Mayson, after a tasting shared with Simon Field MW and Andrew Jefford and featuring additional commentary from Paul White.
This is an extract from an article first published in WFW84. For full tasting notes and scores for all 56 wines tasted by the panel, subscribe to The World of Fine Wine.
Anyone familiar with Portugal will know that the Dão region is capable of producing some of the country’s best, most characterful red wines. It is just that, in the past, all too often the region failed to live up to its reputation, which has now been eclipsed in both volume and status by the new wave of reds from the Douro and Alentejo. It was our mission in this tasting to look again at the region, after a 30-year period when the producers have been quietly rediscovering the intricate granite terroir of central Portugal.
Dão is named after a small river that runs parallel to the upper reaches of the Mondego, the largest river entirely within Portugal’s national boundaries. It is a broad valley, almost cocooned by mountains, with the Serra de Estrela to the southeast, rising to nearly 6,600ft (2,000m) above sea level, the highest point in mainland Portugal. The mountains have an important bearing on the climate, protecting the region from the excesses of both the Atlantic and the Iberian Peninsula. With an annual average of around
This Article was originally published on World of Fine Wine
