The Story
Baga has a reputation as one of Portugal's most difficult grapes: thick-skinned, high in acid, tannic enough to strip paint. Luis Pato has spent his career arguing that this is a farming problem, not a grape problem, and Bairrada is now unimaginable without him. This is his most easygoing statement of the case, a roughly even split of Baga and Touriga Nacional, fermented and raised in stainless steel with a deliberately gentle hand on the extraction. The result lands somewhere between a Beaujolais-Villages and a Langhe Rosso: bright and juicy, with just enough tannic grip to remind you where it came from and a finish that turns salty and long.
Description
Baga has a reputation as one of Portugal's most difficult grapes: thick-skinned, high in acid, tannic enough to strip paint. Luis Pato has spent his career arguing that this is a farming problem, not a grape problem, and Bairrada is now unimaginable without him. This is his most easygoing statement of the case, a roughly even split of Baga and Touriga Nacional, fermented and raised in stainless steel with a deliberately gentle hand on the extraction. The result lands somewhere between a Beaujolais-Villages and a Langhe Rosso: bright and juicy, with just enough tannic grip to remind you where it came from and a finish that turns salty and long.
