2014 Vinha Paz Reserva Dao 750 ml

Hitting the Vine Trail in Dão

If you want to know why our own Vanessa Conlin recently walked the wine trails of Portugal, and why Sur Lucero Master Sommelier is heading there this summer, skip to the second paragraph and learn about Portugal’s incredible upswing growth—we’re out sourcing the best the country has to offer. So, whether you read our full missive on today’s 95-point 2014 Vinha Paz Reserva from Dão, or if you prefer to cut to the chase—just don’t miss out. “When it comes to big, bold reds, Portugal is becoming hard to beat in both quality and price,” so says Wine Enthusiast, and their impressive 95-point rave of the 2014 Vinha is proof positive of their bold thesis. Dominated by the stout Touriga Nacional grape, Dão reds are hailed as some of Portugal’s finest. The Vinha Paz boasts “powerful structure and rich texture” says Enthusiast, which also tabbed it as a “Cellar Selection.” This blockbuster red drinks beautifully today and will evolve rich, savory complexities with some bottle age—it’s a benchmark example that the Iberian Peninsula is still the place for stunning quality for the price. $35 per bottle—exclusive to Wine Access.

Why should we thank the European Union for one of the best values in red wine today? Because in the mid-20th century, the Portuguese government took a noble stab at bolstering the economy in the northern part of the country by building 10 large co-operative wineries in the Dão region. In order to guarantee these massive wineries the raw materials they needed, the government took the logical step of requiring grape growers to sell exclusively to the co-ops. This forced smaller wineries to buy and bottle low-quality, pre-vinified wine—which was just as bad as it sounds: Lakes of inferior wine besmirched the name of the Dão region.

In 1989, a few years before the Maastricht Treaty formally established the European Union, the co-op arrangement was deemed too monopolistic for the E.U. economic model. Now that the Portuguese government was not the only authority with a say in the country’s economic activities, the co-op mandate was overturned. Like Hungary’s Tokaj region after the fall of communism, Dão’s incremental reclamation of its viticultural glory began with the return of the region’s best grapes to its most competent and ambitious vintners.  

António Canto Moniz is one of those vintners. Working with land owned by his family for two centuries, Moniz parlayed the clan’s long history in the region’s wine industry into Vinha Paz. Built around the rich and concentrated Touriga Nacional grape that grows in tiny-berry bunches on the north slope of Dão, Vinha Paz has become an exemplar of what the dry red wines of Dão are all about.

In Dão, Vinha Paz’s vines are rooted in the granitic soils of the storied wine region whose surrounding mountains not only shelter it from adverse weather, but demarcate it as one of the finest regions for Portugal’s indigenous grape varieties.

95 points is a big-league score—the kind that often comes with a price tag nearing triple digits. This is a rare value: some of Portugal’s finest red wine for an amazing price.

Jonathan Cristaldi

Editor-in-Chief, Wine Access