2003 Quinta do Mourão “Rio Bom” Touriga Franca Douro- Portugal, Douro (12/13/2017)
A friend, and fellow FTLOP’er, imported these ourselves some years ago since he had no importer here in the States at that time. I forgot I had these and recently found them in my offsite while looking for something else. A lovely fresh fruit nose quickly gives way to a completely opposite taste. Leather, forest floor, mushrooms, and still some light tannins hanging on. Moderately complex and with a somewhat long dry finish full of that same forest floor and mushrooms. I pulled these at the right time as, based on this bottle, it is drinking at peak right now. Touriga Franca is a tough grape to tame by itself as a dry wine, Quinta do Mourao has done a very nice job of it.
89 Points (89 pts.)
I did taste them in Portugal, back in 2012 or 2013 during the harvest when I visited with the winemaker/owner IIRC. They were bought and we imported them here at the end of 2013. I think we paid just under $30 for them (before import costs added in).
We are going to Portugal in May and starting to plan our tastings. I have read through most of the threads regarding Portugal and your had a lot of good info in your post.
How much were the import costs if you do not mind sharing. We will bring some wine back with us but might want to have some shipped too.
We brought in a fair amount at one time so we got the costs down to about $8/bottle if memory serves. It was a royal pain in the arse to get them out of Portugal and something we said we’d probably not do again ourselves. We’ve brought in stuff from the U.K. For personal consumption as well and that’s relatively easy, for reference.
Thanks for the heads up on the hassle of it. We usually bring a few bottles back from our travels but just pack them carefully in our checked luggage. We will probably do the same for Portugal.
We fly into Lisbon and stay in Sintra the first night. Then we head to Pinhoa for three nights, Guimares for three nights, Algarve for two nights, and back to Lisbon for one night. The five hour drive from Guimares to Algarve will take us through Porto early on the way, but I am not sure if my wife will be up for stopping much on the way. I will stop anywhere as I do not mind driving long distances, even in foreign countries.
Any suggestions on the other areas we will be visiting would be appreciated. We usually do not do much wine tasting on our foreign trips but try to hit 2-3 places when possible. Our emphasis is usually on hiking or running, but always I want to hit a few tastings to replenish our energy.