Quinta de Couselo: The finest albariño of the summer

Quinta de Couselo, made from a blend with 90% albariño, boasts a fruit salad nose and crushed shell minerality.

Matthew Jukes
By
published
in Features

803-Quinta

2015 Quinta de Couselo, O Rosal, Ras Baixas, Spain (£15, H2Vin.co.uk).

I usually start my annual hunt for the finest albario of the summer when I get over to Portugal on my hols. This year, the Consejo Regulador of Ras Baixas decided to bring 50 2015 vintage wines over to London in June job done, and before I have even set foot on a plane! This will help to soothe the pain of a punitive exchange rate and the inevitable failure rate of so many examples of this oft-soapy grape.

My featured wine, along with its stablemate below, gained my top scores. Bodegas Fefianes and Pazo de Seorans were also both superb (do watch out for these as well), but Couselo, made from a blend of 90% albario, 6% caioblanco, 3% loureiro and 1% treixadura showed uncommon length and class overlaying the wonderful counterpoint of its fruit salad nose and crushed shell minerality.

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2015 Turonia (£15, H2Vin.co.uk), from the same estate, is made from 100% albario and it garners even more richness and depth of stone fruit on the nose; the exoticism is cut with epic minerality to drag it back into balance after the flirtatious attack. When I contacted the UK agents H2Vin they informed me that their new shipment of 2015s would arrive on 22 July. I am a great believer in serendipity.

Matthew Jukes is a winner of the International Wine & Spirit Competition's Communicator of the Year (MatthewJukes.com).

Matthew Jukes
Matthew Jukes

Matthew Jukes has worked in the UK wine business for well over three decades and during this time has written 14 wine books.  

Matthew regularly lectures, judges, speaks at wine conferences and runs masterclass tastings for both corporate and private clients all over the world. Matthew is also the creator of his ground-breaking initiative, the One Day Wine School, an indulgent day of tasting and learning first performed in 2006.

He has been the MoneyWeek wine correspondent since 2006 and has written a weekly column for the Daily Mail’s Weekend Magazine since 1999. His four highly-acclaimed, annual wine reports – the Burgundy En Primeur Report, the Bordeaux En Primeur Report, the Piemonte Report and the 100 Best Australian Wines – are published on his website, www.matthewjukes.com.

Matthew is one of the world’s leading experts on Australian wine and, with Brisbane-based wine writer Tyson Stelzer, runs an annual competition in Australia to find ‘The Great Australian Red’.  He was made Honorary Australian of the Year in the UK at the 2012 Australia Day Foundation Gala dinner. 

Matthew is a winner of the International Wine and Spirit Competition's Communicator of the Year Trophy.  His thoughts, recommendations and tastings notes are followed very closely by the wine world at large.

 

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