wine
Colares
A tiny, historic wine region near Sintra producing rare wines from ungrafted Ramisco vines planted in sandy soils.
Colares is one of Portugal's most extraordinary and endangered wine regions, a tiny DOC near Sintra where vines grow in deep sand dunes just metres from the Atlantic. The sandy soils protected the native Ramisco grape from the phylloxera plague that devastated European vineyards in the 19th century, making Colares home to some of the oldest ungrafted vines in the world.
Wines from Colares are intensely tannic and austere in youth but develop remarkable complexity with decades of ageing. Production has shrunk dramatically as urban development encroaches on the vineyards. The Adega Regional de Colares works to preserve this unique viticultural heritage, producing small quantities of wine that represent living history in a bottle.
