Portugal Wine Tasting: Estremadura Region

This week I attended a Portugal Wine tasting hosted by the Midtown Winers, a wine tasting group I belong to in Sacramento, California. Yesterday, I talked about the white wines we sampled. I'll begin the red wines by talking about the only wine we sampled from the Estremadura region. (Map used by permission of Wikipedia.)

It was hard to find much about this region. It isn't even mentioned in Karen McNeil's "Wine Bible." The Spanish and Portuguese wine blog CataVino describes this region as being northwest of Lisbon occupying an area of approximately 24 miles. It's made up of limestone soils or sand. Many grapes are grown here, but the Tinta Miuda is the one we sampled at the tasting. It was even harder to find information on this grape!

The 100% Tinta Miuda was made by Aveleda: Quinta da Aveleda Estremadura 2001. I don't think Aveleda makes this wine any more because I couldn't find it on their web site. The wine had flavors of plum and was earthy. There was light fruit along with a light black pepper taste, similar to what you might taste in a Zinfandel. The finish was not very lasting as the wine had light tannins. This wine was not very memorable, but it was a pleasant wine. It's too bad we only had one wine from the Estremadura region. Monday I'll cover the Duoro region which was very well represented at out tasting. Click here to read an interesting account of CataVino's recent trip in Estremadura.