A detailed, complex and intensely refreshing Portuguese white from gnarly old vines high up in the Douro Valley. From €24.95, £33, $43.99.
From a standing start just over 10 years ago, Pedro Coelho has created a terrific range of wines, from the relatively light-bodied and approachable Canuco red to this miracle of a wine, the Reserva white 2021, that has depth and many layers of flavour as well as immense freshness and a particularly modest alcohol level (12%).
Coelho’s first commercial vintage was in 2015 after two years of trials, which he describes as ‘the drafts to understand if things make sense’. He wanted to make ‘wines that weren’t commonly produced in Portugal. Wines with a natural volume, from the old vines, with good freshness (sourcing from altitude) and work in a less interventionist way with more focus on elegance.’
I asked Coelho what he did before he started Pormenor. He replied, ‘My father was a cork producer, my grandfather was an oak-barrel producer so the family was missing someone to make wine. After finishing my degree in management, I started working in the wine business on the commercial and financial side in wine companies doing wine in the Douro, Tejo and Alentejo. After completing a postgraduate in winemaking, I was able to work with some of the best Portuguese winemakers to learn from them.’
At the outset, Coelho owned no vineyards. He explained, ‘The Douro is a big region and I didn’t start with owning vines. This allowed me to look for vines in different places, with different soils, different expositions, and source grapes from specific areas that can show the Douro in my philosophy’. Since then he has bought some vineyards but still buys a lot of grapes from growers he knows well. ‘Naturally’, he says, ‘I would like to own a few more vineyards, but we have to go step by step.’
Coelho bought the two 80-year-old field-blend vineyards that are the source of the Pormenor Reserva Branco in 2019 though he had been working with the grapes for a long time. True to his philosophy, these old vines are high up at around 550–650 m (c 1,800–2,130 ft) in Pombal de Ansiães in the Douro Superior, the easternmost subregion of the Douro Valley, on granite and schist soils. Some are north-facing, some south-east, and the interplay of exposure, high elevation and picking in the last week of August ensures the wines have intensity allied to a palate-cleansing, mouth-watering acidity. (For those who like numbers, the total acidity is a whopping 8.08 g/l and the pH just 3.02. The wine does not go through malolactic conversion, which would likely have reduced the total acidity.)
The Branco Reserva is a blend of mainly Rabigato, a Douro variety known for its high acidity, with a little bit of Malvasia Fina, a Portuguese variety that may also originate in the Douro (or possibly in the Dão or Lisboa), known as Boal on Madeira. Having spent around 10 months on the lees in used French oak barrels of 500 and 228 litres, and then a further two months in a stainless-steel tank, the 2021 vintage has already benefited from more than a year in bottle.
Wine – and especially wines like this that have been handled gently with no additions other than a low level of sulphites (at bottling, 15 mg/l free SO2, 55 mg/l total SO2) and no fining – is a living thing in which all the components ceaselessly interact. The pure juice, transformed by fermentation carried out by the ambient yeasts that live on the grapes and in the winery, has continued to develop layers of flavour as well as richness of texture thanks to the way the wine has been looked after (‘raised’ or ‘brought up’, to translate the useful French word élever) in barrel and tank between fermentation and bottling.
The way it has matured so far suggests it should continue to gain in complexity over the next five years or probably longer. But why wait when it is already delicious? The 2022 vintage is also very good but the 2021 is perfect now. Here’s my tasting note:
Even more complex than the 2022 Reserva thanks to the extra year in bottle: not just the spicy/creamy barrel and lees-ageing effect but also a toasty and cedary aroma, and still showing plenty of fruit – like smoky grapefruit. You can see that this wine needed bottle age to blossom. Extremely high acidity is balanced by the rich flavour and almost chewy texture – and yet light on its feet thanks to the modest alcohol. Magical contrasts. Long, deep and mouth-watering, with sour-fresh intensity.
With results like this after only 10 years, what, I asked Coelho, is his dream for the future of his wines? He responded, ‘It would be easy to say that I want to have my wines spread all around the world but at the moment I don’t have enough production. Overall I would say, “Identity”. I would like to have people drinking my wines and understand the message, whether they enjoy them or not, at least to understand what we are doing. I want them to drink my wines saying ... it tastes and smells like Pormenor.’
Pormenor, by the way, means ‘details’ in Portuguese.
In the UK, the wine is available from Festa (online only), Barrique Fine Wines in Yorkshire, Hedonism in London, The Vineyard in Ramsbottom and Ad Hoc in Manchester. Coelho's UK importer Raymond Reynolds have only recently begun importing Pormenor wines so there are likely to be more stockists in the future (email info@raymondreynolds.co.uk for updates). Portuguese specialists Festa are offering a 15% discount on this wine and on their entire range to members of JancisRobinson.com, as explained in our Members’ forum.
Pormenor’s US importer is Jeff Davis at J D Selections. Davis tells me the wine is available in New York, New Jersey, Florida, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. For more information on stockists in your area, email jeff@jdselections.com.
According to Coelho, his wines are also available in Canada (Toronto and Quebec), Brazil, Spain, France, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Luxembourg, Poland and Malaysia, as well as Portugal.
This is just one of the 98 wines I reviewed earlier this week in Portuguese whites – mid-2024 collection. For more than 9,500 further reviews of Portuguese wines – red, rosé, white and fortified – search on Portugal in our tasting notes database.