All wines
Boris
Anselmo Mendes
Parcela Única
2020
4.4
Region
Portugal › Vinho Verde › Vinho Verde DOC
Type
white · still
Grapes
Albariño
Alcohol
13%
Volume
750 mL
Sugar
1.5 g/L
Available at
- Wine Bureau#T2892
Tasting Notes(2)
4.4
Same as before - the first thing I named was sardines with grilled lime, exactly what I'd written months ago. Consistency at this level is its own kind of love story: sardines with grilled lime, sea salt, wet stones, smoke, maritime notes, real oak presence integrating into the mineral spine. Compared to Ansitz Dolomytos Sacker Bianco 2016, which I'd tasted the same week on the same axis, this one is heavier with more obvious oak - but Parcela Única is still a baby at this age, the oak still has time to fold in. Seriously great wine.
This is the real deal. The nose hits with something wild and unexpected - sardines with grilled lime, sea salt, wet stones. Utterly savoury and compelling. The oak is present but integrating beautifully, adding structure without masking the wine's mineral intensity. There's a concentration and precision here that genuinely evokes Pierre-Yves Colin-Morey territory - that same tension between power and restraint, the same unflinching minerality. Seriously great wine.
About
Single-vineyard old-vine Alvarinho from the Paço plot at Quinta da Torre in Monção - 4.8 ha at around 75m elevation, north-south orientation, double Guyot, granite-derived soils with alluvial textures and fluvial terraces, vines around 25 years old. Hand-harvested in small boxes with strict bunch selection (only the most mature bunches go into this cuvee; the second pass-through is excluded), destemmed, gentle whole-berry press, long cold settling.
Fermented and aged nine months in new 400L oak with minimal toast (per importer copy; the producer's site is silent on cooperage origin), regular bâtonnage on gross lees, then about a year in bottle before release. 2020 was bottled in June 2022; production around 8,000 bottles (per importer). 13%.
2020 in Monção e Melgaço read balanced rather than overripe - cross-producer notes from the subzone cluster around vibrancy, granitic minerality, wet-stone salinity, light smokiness, and a long stony finish.
