Reserva Branco

Poças - founded 1918 and still wholly family-owned into the fourth generation - has bottled DOC Douro still wines since 1990. The Reserva Branco comes from Quinta de Vale de Cavalos in Numão, Vila Nova de Foz Côa, in the Douro Superior: roughly 440-510 m up, on soils the producer describes as a transition between schist and granite, hand-picked. The recipe pairs Arinto with Códega - the Douro's traditional name for Síria (also called Roupeiro) - drawn from old vines, each variety vinified separately, fermented in barrel and aged in new 300 l oak with bâtonnage on the fine lees - sheets of this era give about 30% Arinto to 70% Códega with 9 months in oak (by 2021 it had moved to 40/60 and 10 months).

2020 was the Douro's opposite of the cool 2021: an exceptionally hot, dry season with budbreak running three weeks early and a compressed harvest from late August, yields well down - a year that rewarded early picking and altitude in the whites.