Menina d'Uva Ciste 2021 Tinto

€ 19.12

While the Trás-os-Montes is known for heavy wines, Menina d’uva couldn’t be much further from that style. Here, she’s begun to modernize the wines in the best possible way: indigenous local grape varieties, organic farming, naked wines made through gentle extraction and a low-tech, heavily-thought-out, soft-touch approach. The result is a win with soft-colored hues, low-to-medium alcohol with natural freshness and tension. Her wines have heightened aromatic nuances of spring fruits, moorland brush and flowers, with unusually profound minerally and metallic textures that vibrate on the palate.

In 2017, Aline Domingues left Paris for Uva, a remote village on the Planalto Mirandês, a quiet and mostly desolate countryside in northeast Portugal. Born in 1989, in Cergy, a small suburb about twenty-five kilometers northwest of the center of Paris, she was the youngest of four children born to Portuguese parents. Immigrants from Uva, only thirty kilometer from the border of Spain, they came to France in search of better economic prosperity and to escape the dictatorship, like so many Portuguese in the 1960s and ‘70s.

Her red wines are strangers from a distant land. They taste and feel every bit as much like they’re from central or western Galicia, or areas like Saint-Pourçain in France’s Upper Loire Valley, or a Côte Roannaise; or the nearly forgotten Persan from Isère, or even what I can only imagine of the Beaujolais Jules Chauvet made decades ago—not only from the alcohol level, but the tensile ripeness and gentle, attractive amargo of the fruit. The aromas in Aline’s reds are high-toned, fresh and bright, even in her Palomba, a darker red made almost entirely of Negreda, a grape variety that is curiously low in tannin for its dark, thick skins. The smell of both is impactful and vibrant, pure and beguiling, like energized spring fruits and the aromas of arid land with sweet red flowers in bloom—this really describes the red, Ciste. Once in the mouth, the textures are unexpectedly concentrated with vibrant, dense and refreshing mineral and metal sensations. Above all, Aline’s red wines are as beautiful and charming as they are contemplative and serious.

Food pairing

Perfect with a starter of veal tartare with cinnamon, sour cream and herring caviar, a creation of Seppe Nobels

Grapes: 70% Bastardo Preta (Trousseau in France), Negreda & 30% white grapes like, Malvasia, Bastardo Branco, Formosa and some others in minuscule amounts.

Here in the two villages of these vineyards, Junqueira and Matela, the soil is more clay-rich and alluvial, which makes for a supple wine despite its high aromatic lift, fabulously rich textures and unexpected palate weight. The grapes are completely whole bunch and co-fermented for only four days and aged exclusively in stainless steel. The short time on skins is intended to achieve good fruit and floral extraction but not dig too far before carbonic characteristics overwhelm the wine; she wants to keep this wine truer to the expression of the place and less to the fermentation technique that pushes up too much fruit and fermentative aromas to the forefront.

Store & Serve

Serve at a temperature of 15-16 ° C. Can now be drunk but will certainly continue to evolve for 2 to 5 years on the bottle. Drink until 5 years after harvest year

Alcoholcontent

12%

Critics & Awards

Wine region: Trás-os-Montes ("behind the mountains") is a Portuguese DOC (Denominação de Origem Controlada) with the same borders as the Transmontano Vinho Regional zone within the Tras-os-Montes e Alto Douro administrative province in the far northeastern corner of Portugal.

The mountains cast a large rain shadow over Transmontano and a wide strip of western Spain beyond. This makes the area one of Portugal's driest. Consequently the best vineyards to qualify for the DOC follow the paths of the region's four main rivers: the Douro, the Sabor, the Tua and the Tamega. Soils are mostly schist with some areas tending toward granite or chalk.

Trás-os-Montes vineyards sit at varying altitudes and as a result produce various wine styles. Vineyards located in cooler, higher areas typically produce wines that are lighter in body and lower in alcohol, while the lower-lying areas are the source of fuller-bodied wines that are often perceptibly high in alcohol. Some of the higher vineyards in the region supply grapes for Portugal's most famous wine, the semi-sweet, lightly sparkling rosé, Mateus.

There are four subregions, classified as IPRs (Indicação de Proveniência Regulemtada); Chaves in the west is known for firm, dry red wines, while Planalto Mirandès in the east and Varosa produce light red wines and crisp, fresh, sometimes slightly sparkling white wines. Valpaços also produces light fruity reds often drunk with a local cake called Folar.

A wide selection of indigenous and international red and white grape varieties are grown and permitted within the DOC. Here are some common Trás-os-Montes whites (you’re on your own with the pronunciation): Viosinho, Arinto, Rabo de Ovelha, Donzelinho Branco, Gouveio (Verdelho), Códega do Larinho, Malvasia Fina, Fernão Pires, Malvasia Fina, Rabigato, and Síria. Some reds: Touriga Nacional, Touriga Franca, Tinta Francesa, Tinta Cão, Bastardo (Merenzao in Spain; Trousseau in France), Tinta Amarela (Trincadeira), Tinta Barroca, Marufo, and Tinta Roriz (Tempranillo). There are many more, but this is a good start.

Tags: Tràs-os-Montes