I thought I was being clever when I made the deduction that a wine called Quinta would have 5 grape varieties in it, and that based on the pink purple rim one of those was Touriga Nacional. After all, we're talking Margaret River where four varieties to the bottle is common.
Well, Sherlock I ain't, there is Touriga in it, but the only other variety is the well known Tinta Cao. I've just gotten back from Vietnam (good morning!), and I reckon that was possibly the name of the dish I had at the restaurant on the last night. Apparently Tinta Cao means red dog (please, no Vietnamese meal jokes), due to to being extremely low yielding. Clearly a grape that the masochist Julian Scott would love, and I believe the name Quinta refers to the Portuguese vineyard classification.
If you were to hand pick about half a tonne each of the above varieties from Yallingup, fermented them with a Portuguese speaking yeast, and put it in old French oak for some malo, you'd end up with this wine. Well, you would if you'd experimented for a few years beforehand.
It completely belies it's 15.8% and I would have expected closer to 14, which I deduced from it's fairly low acidity and svelte tannins. Despite it being fairly late picked, Julian's judgement of the varieties is spot on with no obvious sweetness despite the numbers. The fruit is wonderfully complex and has a beautiful herbal character on the nose and tongue, and perfectly dances the line of savoury and fruity without either being dominant. The finish is long and very more-ish. It goes down far too easily, but that's hardly a negative.
I really like this, Highly Recommended++
PS. the Vietnamese meal was actually Cao Lau, which I also recommend.
I'm trying this a year later, and whilst I am modest, I must say I was right about everything I said, including it benefiting from more time. I also just re-read it's 15.8%, and I still think that's a misprint. It's always interesting to read my own reviews and see if I was right ;)
ReplyDeleteBloody good wine!