A game-changing red from the Douro Valley

(Image credit: © The Electric Eye Photography)

published 6 March 2020

2017 Quinta Da Pedra Alta, Pedra A Pedra Tinto, Douro, Portugal

£15, or £81 for six bottles with free delivery, winebuyers.com

Matt Gant, the extraordinarily talented winemaker behind the First Drop wines from the Barossa Valley in South Australia, has weaved some magic with the wild, swarthy red grapes found in the Douro Valley in Portugal. He knew exactly how to give the grapes a polish and produce a wine gleaming and velvety smooth on the palate. Matt’s desire to avoid over-extraction, which often results in coarse, harsh flavours, and which is so much a signature of old-fashioned Douro reds, makes this wine a game-changer.

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Pedra A Pedra is, thankfully, not another in a long line of international, sweet-fruited, “vinonymous” reds. This sleek wine employs a variety of techniques depending on the fermentation vessel used. Foot treading is followed by gentle plunging in granite lagar fermenters, while open-topped stainless-steel tanks and picking bin ferments are simply plunged. Old French barriques and hogsheads bring subtle seasoning to the whole, and the wine is designed to sing of its unique ingredients – 50% touriga franca, 44% touriga nacional, 5% tinta barroca and 1% fernão pires.

In short, Matt and his local counterpart, João Pires, have captured the essence of the Douro and given it a welcome makeover. At 13.5% alcohol and with stunning spice and luxurious fruit, this wine is unmissable and gives us a glimpse into the Douro’s future. It is keenly priced, too.

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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.