Taboadella Reserva Jaen Dão 2019

The 2019 Taboadella Reserva Jaen Dão (91 Points – Wine Enthusiast) is a delightfully dense, full-bodied red wine that pays testimony to the quality and uniqueness of the Jaen grape as well the Amorim family’s Midas touch with this indigenous variety. Taboadella’s 2019 Reserva Jaen sports a deep purple color and offers an intoxicating perfume of savory dark fruits. Endowed with layers of black fruits, forest berries, and allspice, the 2019 Taboaella Reserva Jaen explodes in the mouth. The wine’s spicy, rich fruit and understated earth tones are carried on rich, heady tannins, assuring a long and mouthwatering finish as well a decade or more of drinking pleasure. For optimal enjoyment, afford the 2019 Taboadella Reserva Jaen 30 minutes or more in a decanter and enjoy it with abandon at cool room temperature (58°-62° F). Anticipated maturity: 2023-2031. Enjoy!

Portugal’s seafaring tradition and spice trade coupled with an enviable position between the sea and the mountains have endowed Portugal with a rich and diverse diet. While many of Portugal’s red wines are served with seafood and meat dishes, Taboadella’s 2019 Reserva Jaen Dão is more frequently reserved for the nation’s heartier dishes such as Leitão, suckling pig basted with garlic, salt, pepper, bay leaves, and more spit roasted over a wood fire. A perfectly grilled pork tenderloin in a fresh ginger, lime, and soy sauce makes a splendid companion, too. Add a tasty orzo salad with garbanzo beans, basil, mint, and red onion for an added kick. Beef Carpaccio in the company of arugula, extra virgin olive oil, fried capers, lemon, and cracked pepper also makes a fine accompaniment. Portugal’s rendition of Iberian ham from the same little black pigs that proliferate throughout the Iberian Peninsula makes a fine pairing as well, as do Portugal’s rich, smoky sausages wrapped in slices of thick country bread with roasted vegetables. Game and of course grilled lamb, bathed in garlic, olive oil, and wild herbs, provides another traditional favorite in the company of the 2019 Taboadella Reserva Jaen. Portugal also enjoys a rich tradition of cheese making so consider serving one of Portugal’s cow, goat, or sheep’s milk cheeses with this wine. Rabaçal, Évora, and full-bodied Queijo de São Jorge cheeses provide especially tasty accompaniments to the rich, full-bodied 2019 Taboadella Reserva Jaen. 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 the 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, Tinta Roriz (also known as Aragonez or Tempranillo), Jaen, and Touriga Nacional, among others, 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 Taboadella’s exceptional varietal, Jaen, grown only in Portugal.

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. The region’s indigenous red grape varieties, most notably Tinta Roriz (also known as Aragonez or Tempranillo), Jaen, Baga, Bastardo, Tinta Pinheira, Touriga Nacional, and Alfrocheiro, figure prominently in the production of red Dão. Dão is proving to be equally adept at fashioning easy-drinking everyday reds as well as deep, sophisticated, age-worthy red wines of considerable renown.