TN: 1995 Luis Pato - Bairrada - Vigna Pan (Portugal)

WINE TALK
1

I’ve been lucky enough to have four bottles this in recent years, and to have a couple more stashed away. The first bottle I’d talked out of Filipa Pato on a visit to the winery in 2007 and shared with Claude Kolm and John Gilman a few years back. It was fabulous. When some surfaced in the market, I stocked up.

Each time the glass is raised, it gives a magnificent burst of decaying leaves that reminds me of a damp deciduous forest in autumn. There is an earthiness on the nose that echoes something in Bordeaux, but it’s unique, and characteristic of all of Pato’s wines in my experience.

In the mouth, it has the firm acidity of the baga grape and some tannins still, though those are largely resolved. It is silky, again in a Bordeaux way, with a very faint sour cherry flavor. It’s at once elegant but also quite powerful. “Androgynous” was the word my friend who shared this with me used.

At their best, Pato’s wines are like an intersection of traditional Rioja, Burgundy and a Barbaresco – light on their feet yet firm. More flesh than a Rioja (and no oak notes) or a Burgundy, less tannic than a nebbiolo wine, but in that neighborhood.

Really a pleasure. Someplace in the 93/94 range for me.

Filipa and her father Luis are wonderful, gracious people. Having met them adds another dimension of satisfaction drinking this wine.

For those who don’t know Bairrada, it’s near Coimbra in the middle of Portugal, south of Oporto and southwest of the Dao region, close to the Atlantic coast. The indigenous grape is baga, which is naturally high in acid and tannin, no doubt in part because of the cool, coastal climate. Pato is the acknowledged leader in the region, using a mix of modern and traditional techniques. In 1999, he opted out of the Bairrada appellation and now uses the less broader regional designation Beiras. The Vigna Pan is one of a number of single vineyard bottlings. He performs a green harvest in August, which helps the baga to ripen and makes an excellent inexpensive white sparkling from that fruit.

His wines are hard to find in the U.S. now, sadly. His biggest export market is Brazil, I believe. K&L carries the Vinhas Velhas (old vines) red and white bottlings sometimes. Both are excellent, and super values.

An amusing footnote:

A couple of years ago, David Zylberberg came to my brown bag group. “I’ve brought something no one here will know,” he said gleefully when he arrived. Then he went to the kitchen to decant his wine and came out crestfallen. “I can’t believe it,” he said. “There’s an empty bottle of my wine on the ledge in your kitchen.” (I have a couple of dozen empties up there.)

2

Opened another bottle of this last night with a meatball stew. The results were essentially the same – wet, autumnal leaves on the nose, lots of fruit. At first the tannins seemed resolved, but with more sips a pretty sturdy hard tannin backbone emerged. Good acidity, too. A unique wine and very pleasurable. That “androgynous” description is still apt.

3

John,

Do they sell a lot of library stuff? Sounds like a great wine. I’ve had a few from that region that were good, but nothing that struck me as heading for special territory the way this has.

4

Some of this popped up at Royal Wine Merchants two years or so ago. It has an Europvin importer strip, so I think it was imported a long time ago. Later vintages at Astor and K&L were imported by someone else, as I recall.

Also, it took a little arm twisting to get Filipa to sell me a bottle of it at the winery in 2007, so I doubt the recent lot in NY came from the winery recently.

5

John -
I love these old (and new, too!) Pato’s. Do you have a picture of the label? I have seen variations of labels for his wines, including some which you have to look very hard to know whether it is one of his wines or not (the estate name is something else).

6

This wine has this label: Vinha Pan | Luís Pato

The current labels are here: Vinhos Tintos | Luís Pato

Pato means duck in Portuguese, so the labels all have some form of duck on them.

The Quinta de Ribarinho bottling, from their ungrafted vineyard, has a very different design.

7

Thanks, John. Will definitely take a look around for some.

8

The Spanish Table always has a good selection of these.

9

Their cheap sparkler is very good and outstanding value. It’s mostly or all baga fruit from a green harvest.

10

That must be the one I am thinking about, but I don’t think that is the ungrafted one; that would be the Pe Franco.

11

They are one and the same. Quinta de Ribeirinho (I misspelled it above) is the vineyard; Pe Franco means ungrafted. Here’s the label and description.

It’s interesting how unproductive (and uneconomical) the ungrafted vines are. Do other varieties planted on their own rates produce this little fruit and take so much tending in order to produce good fruit?

12

Any use trying for a visit? I will be in Porto for a week in early July.

These wines have been decently represented in Norway and I’ve had quite a few, including some from the late 90ies (but not 95).

13

I’d highly recommend a visit. Filipa, the daughter, spent about two hours with us in 2007. I later had her father and mother, who I hadn’t met, to dinner in New York. They are exceedingly charming people.

The winery is close to Coimbra, not too far from the main north-south highway, but it’s viciously hard to find without GPS, I can testify. We were an hour late. My orange Michelin maps were not nearly detailed enough to locate it.

FYI, the university and extensive Roman ruins at Coimbra are worth a visit.

14

Mmm. Old Pato. One of the most distinctive wines in the world.

15

We drink a lot of Pato wines when in Brasil, some of the best available there on a QPR basis.

16

Thanks, I’ll put it in the schedule. I’ve been considering av trip to Coimbra anyway.

17

I’ve got a few magnums in my cellar, from acker online auction a few years ago. I paid $20 for each, inclusive of buyer’s premium and tax. I was lucky, I guess.