The vineyard of Quinta da Carolina is dated from 1931, with almost 2ha of indigenous varieties, with the majority of Tinta Amarela, Tinto Cão, Touriga Francesa, Tinta Francisca, Rufete, Tinta Roriz and Bastardo. This diversity of varieties along with the fact that the vineyard is facing north, allows us to harvest earlier and have a lot of freshness and balance between the different ripening degrees.
The year of 2017 was a very dry year and, also one of the warmer years of the XXI century. The rain didn’t fall since the beginning of the cycle and the temperatures were warm even during the spring, which anticipated the harvest, that was on the 18th of August. The stress that the plants were having because of the lack of water showed a lot of concentration in the fruit, but also very healthy grapes.
After a very careful sorting in the vineyards, during the picking, the grapes arrived at the winery and went directly, whole bunch, to a concrete lagar, and were foot stomped lightly just to have some juice to start fermentation spontaneously. A 2-week maceration on the skins with a very light extraction happened in the lagar, then the grapes were pressed and the wine went to 500 liter barrels of Austrian and French oak for malolactic fermentation. The wine aged over 30 months in barrel, followed by a year in stainless steel where it stabilizes naturally.
The wine was bottled by gravity, manually, with no filtration, finning, whatsoever.