The Most Original Wine Country in Europe

Portugal is a paradox: one of Europe’s oldest wine nations (Phoenicians and Romans both made wine here) with the freshest perspective. While the rest of the world converged on Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay, Portugal kept its 250+ native grape varieties — Touriga Nacional, Baga, Trincadeira, Castelão, Arinto, Alvarinho, and hundreds more. Most of these grapes exist nowhere else on Earth. They produce wines with a character that cannot be replicated in any other country, no matter how skilled the winemaker.

The Douro Valley: More Than Port

The Douro Valley is one of the most dramatic wine landscapes in the world — steep schist terraces carved into the sides of a gorge that runs 200 kilometers east from Porto into Spain. Port, the fortified wine produced here since the 17th century, made the Douro Valley world-famous. But the best story in Portuguese wine today is the Douro’s dry table wines. When producers like Barca Velha (Portugal’s most iconic wine) began making unfortified red wine from the same Touriga Nacional, Touriga Franca, Tinta Roriz, and Tinta Barroca vines used for Port, the results were extraordinary: structured, deep, and capable of 20-plus years of aging.

Alentejo, Vinho Verde, and the New Wave

Alentejo covers almost a third of Portugal’s land area in the hot, flat south. Its best wines — full-bodied reds from Aragonez (Tempranillo), Trincadeira, and Alicante Bouschet — have made it Portugal’s most commercially successful dry wine region internationally. Vinho Verde (literally “green wine”) comes from the cool, rainy northwest and is not about color but youth — the wines are made to be drunk within a year of harvest. Modern Vinho Verde Alvarinho (Albarino in Spain) from the Monção e Melgaço sub-region is a sophisticated, mineral, age-worthy white that bears little resemblance to the semi-sparkling, low-alcohol “green wine” most consumers know.