2003 Quinta do Crasto Reserva Vinhas Velhas

The 2003 “Reserva Old Vines” is a field blend from 70-year-old vines, raised in a mixture of French and American oak barrels and bottled without filtration. It is a whopper, rich, ripe and rather oaky at first, with the American oak seeming to show a bit initially. The texture is soft and sensual. With air, the wine goes through some radical changes, from the fruit and the tannins becoming far more assertive, to the oak beginning to integrate beautifully. It is a very fine, very sexy, very voluptuous Reserva that actually showed better the next day. Drink 2008-2018. This old, historic estate, owned by the Roquette family, is on everyone’s short list for the designation “best dry wine producer in Portugal,” and with good reason. This is one of the estates that turbo-charged the dry red revolution in modern Portugal. As befits a standard bearer, they go from strength to strength and their wines are in high demand. Even their off-vintage wines are good, while their upper level “good vintage” wines are some of the most sought after in Portugal, and some of the most distinguished the country has to offer. The Roquettes’ exciting new joint venture with Jean-Michel Cazes (of Chateau Lynch Bages) is another feather in their caps. It is separately listed under “Roquette e Cazes.” The lineup from Quinta do Crasto was probably the most impressive that I tasted, from top to bottom, when I was in Portugal. (The wines reviewed here, as with almost everything in this report, were retasted from bottle under controlled conditions in the USA.) If there is a downside, it is the obvious one – the wines are pretty pricey, a function of prestige and, sometimes, scarcity. Importer: Broadbent Selections, San Francisco, CA; tel. (415) 931-1725