Jim's Loire: #EWBC: scenes from the Douro with Les garçons du Douro

2 November 2010

Barrels and vats@Quinta do Vale Meão

Very long day yesterday. Left Lisbon around 8.30 and arrived in Quinta do Vale Meão, near Pocinho in the Upper Douro, around 2.30pm – programmed to arrive around 1pm. Timings probably calculated using a Ferrari smashing the speed limit and it didn't help that our tour guide missed the turning to Vale Meão within 55 seconds of getting on our bus.

Carrie Jorgenson (Cortes de Cima) – always connected@service station in middle of Portugal

We had two very good visits to Quinta do Vale Meão and Quinta do Crasto. Vale Meão is owned and run by Francisco (Vito) Olazabal. I first met Vito when he was in charge of Ferreira, best known for their Ports and Barca Velha. Sometime in the mid-1990s I stayed overnight at their Quinta do Portal near Pinhõa. Over dinner we drank Barca Velha – unfortunately I can't remember the vintage or possibly vintages that we enjoyed. Anyway it was good to meet Vito again.

Vale Meão used to be one of the sources for Barca Velha. The estate used to have 30 owners – many of whom took little interest in it and rarely visited. In the 1960s Vito started buying parcels from his fellow family members until he finally acquired all the parcels some 30 years later in the mid-1990s. In 1998 he quit as director of Ferreira, part of the Sogrape Group, in 1998. "Not a very wise thing to do as I was just two years off collecting my pension," he remarked. "But I don't regret it at all. It was my son, Xito, an oenologist who urged me to do it."

Qunita do Vale Meão: Francisco (Vito) Olazabal (right) and his son Francisco (Xito) and daughter Luisa

Xito is the winemaker and his sister, Luisa, has recently joined Vale Meão to look after the marketing and PR. The property has three wines: the estate red Vale Meão, a second wine called Meandro and a Port. They are the sole amongst the Douro Boys not to make a white.

I think the Olazabals are right to keep their range simple. I enjoyed all their red wines – both at the Douro boys tasting in Lisbon and during our visit to the property. The concentrated, black fruited and supple 2004 Vale Meão and the very fine 2000 Vale Meão with its beautiful balance of ripe fruit and freshness in the finish. The 2000 was the product of a difficult flowering, so a very small crop. The result is one of the finest Douro reds we tasted on the trip.

We tasted the wines over a very enjoyable lunch starting with a delicious spinach soup – a reminder how central soup is to good Portuguese home cooking. Then we had leave to get the train down the Douro from Pocinho to Ferrao. Unfortunately we had only a few minutes of light, so missed much of the spectacular scenery on the way to Ferrao.

(Visit to Quinta do Crasto will be covered in a separate post.)