Lovely aromas of chocolate, wood, dark fruit, and baking spices, complex and inviting.  Chocolate runs through the wine from the attack to the midpalate, joined by dark spiced fruit and balsamic notes throughout.  Both tannins and acidity are pronounced but integrated nicely with air.  Medium in body with a longer finish.

WINE INFORMATION

Vasco Maria Eugénio de Almeida was born to a famous family in August 1913. He trained in agronomy at one of Portugal’s best schools to prepare himself to take over a property his great grandfather acquired from the Jesuits and his grand father planted to wine and olives. Not only was he a good scientist, but he was also a Christian humanist and a philanthropist particularly sensitive to educational and social issues, music, and theater. He rebuilt the Carthusian monastery founded in 1598 that gave its name to this wine, created schools and hospitals, parks, and other projects benefiting people in Alentejo and Lisbon. Although married, he and his wife never had children. He founded the Eugénio de Almeida Foundation in 1963, which carries on the projects he started as well as numerous new ones. He died in August 1975.

The family owns over 600 hectares of vineyards and three wineries, all gravity fed. Alicante Bouschet is a deeply colored, red-fleshed, drought resistant grape; when yields are controlled, it produces soft fruity wines with good color. Castelão is Portugal’s most common grape, hardy and adaptable, producing deeply colored, aromatic, full-bodied, oak-loving age-worthy wines. Trincadeira is a native Portuguese grape, a bit tricky to grow, that offers good structure, full body, rich dark fruit, and clove and cinnamon spice. Grapes for this wine are harvested manually, destemmed, gently crushed, and fermented in temperature controlled steel vats, followed by an extended maceration in vat. The wine is transferred to barrel for a year, bottled, and aged a year in bottle before release.

Grilled preparations, Hearty stew, Pork, Red Meat, Roasted Root Vegetables, Sausage, Slow-smoked Barbeque/BBQ Sauce