Full disclosure: I love dry sparkling red wines. When they’re made out of a red autochthonous grape, in this case Vinhão, how can I resist?
Vinhão is normally made into a blood-stained still red wine, but here it was allowed a second fermentation in bottle, then treated to significant bottle aging, all of which built in deep complexity. The wine has outgrown the raw-flesh quality of younger varietal Vinhão, and now evinces cured meat and Marmite. It’s fragrance is redolent of resinous dried herbs and field flowers that drift above a body stained with pomegranate and cranberries. Quite delicate despite all of this complexity and savoriness, with a creamy, mildly astringent mousse that fizzes away swiftly in the glass, bottle, and mind.
One of the most interesting wines I’ve sampled in the last year. I need to taste it again and again.
11% abv | Aphros works with Michael Skurnik in N.Y. and Winewise in Calif.
Sample tasted at the winery on 19 May 2016.
Read A Conversation With Vasco Croft Of Aphros: Part One and Part Two.
