2006 Quinta de Lemos Dao Dona Santana

The 2006 DONA SANTANA is sourced from 7 year old vines. It is a blend of Touriga Nacional and Tinta Roriz. Opening with a hint of funk, it pulls itself together well and rather quickly. Like the ‘06 Tinta Roriz, it is a very fine effort in a difficult vintage. Add a fair hit of tannins and high acidity and it does have some rustic overtones. It does evolve in the glass, however, and it shows some potential, too. There is a bit of a sour plum note that emerges with aeration—the Touriga Nacional, perhaps. It certainly did not seem evocative of the grape. This is awfully impressive at times, but at other times I had some issues with it. This runs around 16 euros in Portugal. Drink now-2016. Quinta de Lemos is a beautiful and relatively new winery in the sub-region of Silgueiros. It is owned by the Lemos family and has a lot of promise. The vines remain mostly rather young (the ‘08 Georgina, for instance, was sourced from 9 year old vines). The wines, though, are faithful to what I view as the region’s style--elegant in the mid-palate, while remaining well structured and ageworthy. They have a certain Burgundian feel to them overall, but the structure can tend as much to astringency as support. There are no compromises here, but I did have some concern at times about the balance. These young vines wines have no track record. If they are all intended to be drunk 15 years later, there is some inherent risk. The vineyards are dominated by Touriga Nacional, with Tinta Roriz the next most prominent grape. Remember that these wines need air or cellar time. They showed far better in the USA over a couple of hours than they did at the winery in Portugal when I did not have much time to spend with them. There, they seemed to have an impossibly hard and rustic edge. I tend to be conservative in drinking windows, but even the older wines here were all prime time material. Obviously, a lot of the older wines are library wines. There is no importer as yet.