Casa Do Valle Vinho Verde Special Edition 2015 (1.5L/6)
Tasting Notes
The 2015 Special Edition is a blend of mostly Alvarinho (80%) plus a field blend (20%), not quite bottled when seen. It is quite dry and comes in at 13.7% alcohol. It was 50% fermented in stainless steel, the rest in used French oak. The idea here, said Luis Cameira, was to make a deeper wine using a mix of the Alvarinho grapes from his Grande Escolha and some old vines. The oak shows a small bit, but that should be nominal in the long run. The most notable feature here is the big acidity that lifts the fruit and makes this very tense, even more so than the regular Grande Escolha bottling reviewed last issue. It will be interesting to see how this comes together once it has had a few months in the bottle. It may be the best table wine I’ve ever seen from this winery, easily eclipsing the recent 2015 Grande Escolha (which is increasingly impressive right now and even better than when I first saw it a few months back). There were 1,650 magnums produced. The suggested price references a magnum–it is intended that only magnums will be produced.
