Taboadella Encruzado Reserva Dão 2022

Although Taboadella’s Encruzado Reserva is always a vigorous full-bodied white wine, the 2022 vintage is especially concentrated and vivacious – a wine that truly enlivens the senses. Moreover, the 2022 Taboadella Encruzado Reserva cuts a fine figure in the glass as it shines with crystalline brilliance. As a beautifully textured wine, it delivers subtle fruit flavors with laser-like precision. The wine’s pear, white peach, and citrus flavors are imbued with a touch of spice and a fine patina from partial oak ageing. Fresh and firm to the finish, the youthful and complex 2022 Taboadella Encruzado Reserva races across the palate to a smashing finish. Although quite enjoyable and intriguing now, the 2022 Taboadella Encruzado Reserva remains an infant. It will evolve slowly in the bottle and pay dividends for several years or more. Enjoy now and often, with a moderate chill (40°-45° F). Anticipated maturity: 2024-2028.

The 2022 Taboadella Encruzado Reserva begs to be brought to table, but what does one serve with a complex wine that displays laser-like precision? How about seafood and more? Taboadella’s 2022 Encruzado Reserva provides the ideal choice to accompany the seafood dishes that the Portuguese devour with abandon. Clams, oysters, and mussels prepared almost any way make fine entrees. Bronzino Mediterranean prepared with Mediterranean herbs, arugula, red pepper, and mango in the company of a fennel salad makes an especially tasty companion. Pan Seared Halibut with a beurre blanc sauce accompanied by crab meat risotto, zucchini, and fresh tomatoes makes another splendid accompaniment. Seafood Ravioli with lobster and shrimp in a lightly spicy tomato cream sauce earns two thumbs up as well. For those not beholden to the sea for sustenance, consider serving a juicy Grilled Bone-In Pork Chop or hearty Wild Mushroom Risotto with Taboadella’s delightful 2022 Encruzado Reserva. Bom Apetite!

“We believe that Dão is one of Portugal’s most emblematic and promising wine regions, home to great wines with a classic profile and enormous longevity, a unique territory that not only demonstrates the full potential of Touriga Nacional and Encruzado, but also of traditional Portuguese grape varieties. The region has a great history and certainly has a great future” – Luisa Amorim

Taboadella, nestled in the heart of the Dão between mountains of pine, chestnut, and cork oak, has been a place full of life and character for millennia. This ancient settlement alongside the Ribeira das Fontainhas dates to the first century when a Roman villa, winery, granary, and assorted other buildings occupied present day Taboadella. Taboadella’s prominence re-emerged again in the 13th century when it came under the auspices of the Knights Templar. In 1504 it received a formal charter from Portugal’s King Manuel and subsequently became the domain of several knighted families until being acquired by its present owners, the Amorim family.

The Amorims have been involved in wine since 1870 when they began negotiating cork sales to Port producers in Vila Nova de Gaia. And, although they remain one of the world’s largest suppliers of cork, they have over the last three decades committed themselves to restoring and developing wineries and vineyards of historical significance in Portugal’s Alentejo, Dão and Douro. In addition to Taboadella, the Amorims are the proprietors of the Aldea de Cima estate in the Alentejo and one of the most respected Port lodges, Quinta Nova de Nossa Senhora do Carmo, in the Douro.

Today, Luisa Amorim oversees Taboadella and the family’s other Quintas where wines and vineyards have ancestral roots and cultural importance. She has helped restore Taboadella to its original purpose as a winery, vineyard, and a place full of life and character in harmony with its surroundings. Only indigenous grape varietals such as Encruzado and Touriga Nacional are cultivated at Taboadella, which enables the family to “recover from the past the essence of nature and project great wines into the future with a remarkable typicality [while] maintaining the ancestral character of the Dão.” We invite you to taste the exceptional wines of Taboadella.

Located in the north/central part of Portugal, Dão is surrounded on all sides by mountains, which shelter this important viticultural region from severe weather and provide the ideal conditions for the cultivation of Portugal’s excellent, though mostly unsung, indigenous grape varietals. The region’s high altitude vineyards grow on granite and schist soils up to nearly 3,500 feet. Dão’s high altitude makes for cool nights, slow ripening, and the propensity to produce highly aromatic wines of superior elegance and longevity.

The Dão produces both red and white wines. Dão’s signature white grape is Encruzado, a grape renowned for producing tasty white wines in a myriad of styles, which range from fresh, light and supremely elegant white wines to crunchy, complex, barrel-aged versions. Although it is increasingly bottled as a varietal, Encruzado often finds its way into blends with Malvasia Fina, Bical, Cercial, Rabo de Ovela, or Verdelho. The region’s finest red grape variety is Touriga Nacional, which also stars as the most important grape variety in Port, Portugal’s most celebrated wine. Tinta Roriz (also known as Aragonez or Tempranillo), Jaen, Baga, Bastardo and Tinta Pinheira also figure prominently in the production of red Dão. Dão is proving to be equally adept at fashioning easy drinking every day reds as well as deep, sophisticated, age worthy red wines of considerable renown.