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BorisBoris
Filipa Pato
Espírito de Baga
2020
4.3
Region
Portugal › Bairrada › Bairrada DOC
Type
red · still · sweet · fortified
Grapes
Baga
Alcohol
18.5%
Volume
375 mL
Sugar
113 g/L
Available at
Tasting Notes(3)
4.3
Same notes as before - gorgeous wine. Concentrated blood, dried cherry, briny pickles, liquorice, salinity, tar, all accounted for. Drinks dry despite the sugar; brilliant fortification. My last bottle, and there's something fitting about that: my first meeting with this wine was Alessio sharing it with people, and that's exactly what I did with my own bottles - shared this beauty with others. The wine is brilliant; sharing it is its own pleasure.
About
A vintage-dated fortified red Baga in the Bairrada licoroso tradition - the regional fortified-red category that runs in parallel to Port and uses the same mutage technique (fermentation arrested by grape spirit, leaving residual sugar from unfermented must). Other Bairrada estates have made fortified Baga for years - Quinta das Bágeiras' Abafado is the better-known sibling - but Filipa's bottling distinguishes itself in the details: estate-grown Baga from her biodynamic vineyards, foot-trodden in a wide lagar, and fortified specifically with aguardente she has distilled from Baga itself rather than generic grape spirit. Aged for two years in old neutral pipas before bottling.
Filipa Pato has spent her career building the case for Baga as a serious red. This cuvée is the variety's argument from another angle: that Baga's natural tannic spine and acidic frame can carry a sweet, fortified register the way Touriga Nacional does up north. The 2020 release is in 375ml - earlier vintages (2010, 2015) came in 500ml. Built to age fifteen years or more in bottle.
