The Douro Valley is a wine region that combines both tradition and innovation, according to seasoned winemaker and winery manager Christian Seely. In this Christian Seely interview, we discuss the terroir of the Douro; traditional vineyard management and winemaking techniques as well as innovative ones; and the potential of this wine region not only for fortified Port wines but also white wines and red wines.
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Video teasers: Christian Seely interview
Is traditional Port production worth it? Christian Seely interview clip
Transcript for hearing impaired:
What are the key aspects of traditional winemaking here that you think are worth preserving? And what do you think is most important to modernise?
We make all our Port wines here at Romaneira in lagars. So they are foot trodden, and the same is true at Quinta do Noval – all the Port wines are made in lagars. And there’s a reason for that. You still make the best Port wines in lagars, it’s a tiny proportion of the total Port production in the Douro now that’s made in lagars because it’s very expensive: it means getting a group of people together who are prepared to tread grapes every night for 6 to 8 weeks. And it’s a tough job actually!
And there are many arguments saying it is a lot easier to do it in a stainless steel tank. But we’ve made experiments where we’ve vinified grapes from one parcel, dividing the parcel in two and vinifying half in lagars and half in stainless steel vats. And you make a very nice Port in a stainless steel vat, but lagars always give the best result. I think there are two main reasons: one is that the fermentation and maceration time of Port is extremely short, so between the time you pick the grapes and the time you drain off the wine from the lagar and add the aguardiente it’s usually about 3 days, and that’s not very long.
So imagine your maceration time is very short, you’ve got to extract everything you want to extract in that time. And foot treading is an extremely efficient, mechanical way of treading, a very gentle but thorough way – gentle because of the bare soles of the feet, which don’t crush the pips, but extremely efficient because a lot of people walking up and down on the grapes does achieve a very efficient extraction.
And then the other thing is that a normal vat is normally a tall, relatively thin thing – so the cap is at the top and the liquid is underneath. And you’ve got to extract from the cap that’s on the top. With a lagar, it’s a low, wide thing, and so you’ve got a big surface of the skins that rise to the surface of the lagar, exposed to a relatively small volume of liquid and so you get excellent extraction and maceration for that reason as well.
Lagars are definitely worth preserving. It’s a very expensive way of making Port but if you want to make something great, I believe that it’s essential.
The potential of Douro white wine: Christian Seely interview clip
There are some absolutely wonderful white grape varieties here in the Douro. At Romaneira, we have some Gouveio, which is almost the same thing as Verdelho but not quite. We have some Spanish Verdelho planted. We have some Malvasia Fina, and we have some Viosinho. And these are grape varieties that have wonderful natural acidity, and in spite of the heat that we have here, we’ve never had to acidify (and never wanted to acidify) a white wine from here, because it is just not necessary.
The white wines have this wonderful freshness and acidity in spite of the heat, and I think we can make white wines here that can express minerality. We’ve got this schistous soil and some of the most thrilling white wines I’ve tasted from the Douro are wines that have freshness and balance. But also you get a feeling of minerality that makes you think of the schistous rock of the Douro. And we come back to what we were saying before, that a wine that can make you think of the place that it came from will be rather more interesting and fun to drink than one that doesn’t.
What does the Douro taste like? Christian Seely interview clip
So what is the expression of the Douro, and how does it reflect its ‘terroir’?
Well, if you look around you could see that this is a very beautiful, special place and that there’s a wildness to the place and if you spend time walking around in the Douro, you get wonderful, wild herbs that you crush underfoot as you walk around. And I don’t think it’s fanciful to think that there are Douro wines that have aromatics that remind you of that.
Touriga Nacional has quite often, when vinified as a red wine, a nose that smells of the wild roses of the Douro. Any wine that has a chance of being great is a wine that expresses something unique about a place. It’s what I’m looking for in Bordeaux, it’s what I’m looking for in Burgundy, it’s what I’m looking for in the Douro. And what I aim to produce here at Romaneira and at Noval are wines that express the unique nature of the place, and when I taste them I think ‘Yes, that comes from Romaneira – and I don’t think it could have come from anywhere else.’
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More features on Port and the Douro:
- Fast Facts: A guide to Port and the Douro
- Port – a time capsule wine
