Colares - Chipped Away, Little by Little

3/31/12 -

The story of Colares is not an easy one to tell without getting at least a little sentimental.  Even our own unflappable jefe, David Lillie, gets a glimmer in his eye when recalling his days as a Portuguese wine buyer, the chance to meet the Colares legend Paolo da Silva, and to drink his Colares Chita wines from the 70’s.  Tragically, like much of the Colares vineyard land - once lovingly called “the Bordeaux of Portugal” due to its ability to produce balanced and age-worthy wines - Chita is no mas.   Along with its reputation for producing age-worthy wines, Colares, with its abundance of sandy soils, survived phylloxera and at one time was the world’s largest un-grafted outcropping of vineyard land - a European anomaly.  Having not seen any Colares wine Stateside in many years, we had been wondering if there was any left.  Happily, the answer is yes. 

Thanks to importer Jose Pastor, who has visited the region many times, we now have the opportunity to offer tiny quantities of the rare Colares wine, albeit from an unlikely source: the Adega Regional cooperative.  Ahem… co-op wine you say?  Yes, after tasting a beautiful line-up of wines, including a gorgeous and mature 1992, it was quite obvious to us that this is no ordinary co-op.   Under the direction of the young winemaker and viticulturist Francisco Figueiredo, the Colares co-op is functioning at an extremely high level.  While adhering to the traditional winemaking of the area, Francisco has been making improvements, getting rid of dirty old barrels that at one time gave the co-op a bad name and incorporating temperature control to maintain freshness.  The resultant wines are impeccably balanced with a sandy texture and vivid, fresh flavors that could only come from the influence of the Atlantic.  These wines are truly age-worthy and have the Adega Regional poised to build upon the rich Colares legacy.

The legacy here is the vineyards.  Colares is located just northwest of Lisbon, right on the coast.  The vineyards are perched on cliffs 200 meters high, overlooking the sea.   These gnarly vines are planted in sand dunes using the unusual method of excavating several meters of sand to form a hole; the vine is then planted in the calcareous clay underneath.  Over 2 years or so the sand is slowly put back into the hole as the vine grows. This arduous task, along with the demand for summer homes in the area, has forced many of the growers to sell their vineyards. This does not bode well for the native Ramisco and Malvasia Colares, maybe two of the only vines in the world never to have been grafted onto American rootstock.  Over the last 10 years, the vineyard land has been more or less stable.  Currently, there are 12-14 acres left, making Colares the smallest D.O.C. in Portugal.  We love these inimitable wines and we love this singular terroir.  We hope that Francisco and the Adega Regional will continue to protect it.  Francisco once described the Colares vineyard land as “chipped away, little by little,” but for us it is still very much alive. - cb