Wine History

Grape Origins
The Grapes are chosen from a vineyard planted in 1998. Only Touriga Franca, Touriga Nacional and Tinta Roriz grape varieties were planted. Quinta da Ferradosa only uses 10% of its grape production, selling the rest. This gives us the opportunity to choose bunch by bunch, row by row, which grapes we would like for the best quality wine. In 2013 we chose 50% Touriga Nacional and 50% Touriga Franca.

Conditions
The viticulture year of 2013 started in the winter of 2012 with quite a bit of rain, particularly during January and February. March saw the strongest rainfall (176mm of rain). The soil had water replaced after two years of very dry weather. April and May were quite cool, which delayed the vegetative cycle for almost two weeks. June, July and August were nearly completely dry months, with higher than average temperatures. The little rainfall did not affect the vineyard too much, as the Douro vines are very adaptable to adverse circumstances and are able to find water in very deep soils. The grape maturation delayed almost 10 days in relation to the average annual registries and we began the harvest for our white wines on the 13th of September and for our red wines, a week later than average, on the 20th. The Harvest happened under great sunshine for the first few weeks. By the end of September it rained, which made us stop picking for a few days. Picking restarted after Eastern winds dried up the grapes and the harvest continued under sunny weather.

Vinification and aging
All wine was vinified at Quinta Vale D. Maria winery. All grapes were first foot-trodden in traditional granite lagars before fermenting in stainless steel tanks (5000 kgs). We then rack the resulting wines in new Allier French oak 225 and 300 liter casks from various coopers (Taransaud, Seguin Moreau, Nadalié and François Fréres), where they go through malolactic fermentation. All wines are then carefully aged for 15 months in barriques (75% new and 25% one year old French oak), keeping all different fermentations completely separated until the final blending takes place, just about one month before the bottling of the wines.

Bottling
July 2015, 7.151 bottles 75cl

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