Paseo Red, Lisboa, Portugal 2014 (£5.75, Oddbins) If you’re looking for budget red wine in Europe it pays to head south. In Italy that might be Puglia, in France the Languedoc-Roussillon and in Spain the dusty plains of Castilla-La Mancha or the cluster of regions around Valencia known as the Levant. The theory holds on the furthestwestern reaches of the continent, too: the powerful but refined wines of the Douro and, to a lesser extent, the Dão, get most of the critical attention in Portugal –the country’s equivalents of Bordeaux and Burgundy. But the easy-going reds of the south are where you’ll find most joy if your budget doesn’t stretch much beyond a fiver, Oddbins’ Lisbon-sourced Paseo being a red plum-juicy old favourite of mine for this credit-straitened time of year.
Quinta de Chocapalha Tinto, Estremadura, Portugal 2010 (£11.95, Corney & Barrow) The vineyards around Portugal’s capital aren’t only concerned with the simple, cheap and cheerful, however. At Quinta de Chocapalha just to the northeast of Lisbon, there’s a commitment to something rather more serious from the husband-and-wife team Paulo and Alice Tavares da Silva, whose daughter, Sandra, just happens to be one of Portugal’s most talented winemakers. Their house red, made from a mix of grape varieties including Portugal’s finest Touriga Nacional, is a polished mix of lavender, damson and dark cherry; their Reserva Vinha Mae 2010 (also available from Corney & Barrow, £20.95) adds intensity, chunkier tannin and oak spice to the mix. Both have a seam of freshness that makes them intensely drinkable.
Ramos Reserva, Alentejo, Portugal 2013 (£9.99, or £6.66 as part of a mixed case of six bottles, Majestic) The biggest and best-known southern Portuguese wine region is the Alentejo, a vast undulating plain (it takes up a third of the country’s total area) sprinkled with the Mediterranean trinity of cork oaks, olive trees and vines. The star producer here is João Portugal Ramos, a key figure in the renaissance of Portuguese wines since the 1980s, lending his expertise across the country before starting his own project in the Alentejo in 1990. While his name is still attached to projects throughout Portugal, it’s Ramos’s strikingly bright fruit-driven Alentejo reds that I find most consistently rewarding. Both Majestic’s Reserva blend and the similar Marques de Borba 2014 (£9.90, www.tanners-wine.co.uk) offer a deeply satisfying slick of warming dark plummy richness.
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