Making a Case for Portuguese Wine

Cabriz Colheita Seleccionada doesn’t get the love it deserves, despite being one of Portugal’s finest.

We often decry the decline in port’s popularity over the past few decades, but the double whammy is that the new crop of Portugal’s excellent table wines—which are supposed to be taking up port’s slack—are likewise getting insufficient love. Perhaps no bottle of wine better expresses this sad state than this near-perfect blend of old-world grit and minerality with new-world easy fruit expression that should be a guaranteed crowd pleaser. And it just made #46 on Wine Spectator’s influential Top 100—you couldn’t get more appealing if every bottle was hand-delivered by Cristiano Ronaldo. Maybe it’s the odd grapes—alfrocheiro, tinta roriz (what the headstrong Portuguese insist on calling tempranillo) and touriga nacional—but the fact that this bottle, at this price, isn’t long sold out is the early favourite for head-scratcher of the year.

Cabriz Colheita Seleccionada 2014, $18

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