Grape Variety: Vinhao

Colour: Red

a.k.a Souzao, a native to the Iberian Peninsula, used in Both Spain and Portugal, It has many synonyms.  gives highly-coloured wines and was was used in the Douro in the 18th century to give colour to the blends destined for port wines, because the British merchants required deeply-coloured wines.  Used nowadays in California by aspiring port wine-makers.

Dark as the inside of a coal mine at midnight the Afros Vinho Verde has impenetrable opacity, presents a slightly prickly sensation in the mouth and then bursts out smilingly with thick gobs of bramble jam and exotic black cherries and black raspberries. The tannins are chewy, agreeably abrasive, and, twinned with the angular acidity, create a pucker-sour-sizzle combination which confronts the palate with plenty of difficult textural adjustments. You can almost smell the colour of this distilled purple juice; it’s as if the skins had been freshly ripped off the flesh and just finished fermenting in the glass. The texture is part stalky and part bitter chocolate but it is the kinetic acidity that simultaneously drives the tannins over the gums and helps to alleviate their astringency. 

This is a prime example where cultural context might provide the narrative necessary to appreciate the spirit of the wine. Served chilled with some slow cooked shoulder of pork or one of those artery-coating Asturian bean stews this wine’s snappy vitality would not only cut through, but dissolve, fat.  I can think of few better drinks to be supped al fresco, preferably in a carafe, where the thrilling, almost unreal intensity of the colour and the joyfully rasping rusticity would seem to laugh in the face of wine convention.