Quinta do Crasto Touriga Franca 2016

€ 59.00

Quinta do Crasto Touriga Franca is rich violet in colour. On the nose, it offers an impressive intensity and highly concentrated aromas of red fruits in perfect harmony with soft floral notes. In the mouth, it starts intensely and then evolves into an elegant wine, with excellent mouth volume and silky tannins, all of which are well integrated with notes of red fruits. Its finish is perfectly balanced, extraordinarily long, and full of freshness. This wine is the perfect expression of the identity of the grape variety. There were 12,200 bottles produced

First launched in 2019, coming from the 2016 harvest, Quinta do Crasto Touriga Franca is the third single-varietal produced by Quinta do Crasto. It joins the Quinta do Crasto Tinta Roriz and Quinta do Crasto Touriga Nacional, making an important contribution to the vineyard’s offering of single-varietals.

Food pairing

Ideal for all kinds of meat, especially grilled meat dishes.

Grapes: Touriga Franca (100%)

aged 18 months in new French oak barrels of 225 liters

Single-varietal Touriga Franca wines are rarely found. However, this is an emblematic Douro grape that is well adapted to the viticultural characteristics of the region and highly interesting oenologically speaking. It is a reliable variety that has the great virtue of producing low levels of alcohol in spite of the heat in a region such as the Douro. Despite these positive features, Touriga Franca is a challenging variety as it only achieves its true potential when it reaches perfect phenolic maturation. That is why the Quinta do Crasto Touriga Franca matures late, in other words, the grapes of this variety require a long time to reach the right and perfect ripeness. In order to achieve this, the grapes need to come into equilibrium, which only happens in a terroir with all the necessary conditions to produce a truly exceptional wine.

Alcoholcontent

14%

pH: 3,67

Store & Serve

Store at a constant temperature of 15 ° C.

Serve and decant at 16 ° C. Drink from now until 2031

Critics & Awards

4,5/5 - Vivino (58 ratings)

93/100 - The Wine Advocate Tasted February 2019

This 2016 Touriga Franca is the debut of a new monovarietal in Crasto's lineup, sourced from 35-year-old vines. It was aged for 18 months in 90% used French oak and comes in at 14% alcohol. More nuanced than the Touriga Nacional (but not as sexy or as aromatic), this has a touch of rhubarb and herbs, then plums. Despite being double decanted for some six hours, it showed the ability to improve notably in the glass over an hour or more, constantly getting better. Good depth and moderate tannins allow the wine to seem serious and well balanced. I liked this more and more as it aired out. Admittedly, there is no track record, but it made me want to lean up on it for the moment. It will have some questions to answer in the cellar, but it seems like an impressive debut.

Tags: Quinta do Crasto - Douro