You’ll have heard some of our news in the featured article of October’s Vineyard Partner magazine.

Here, however, is the full story of the 2021 vintage of the Centenário Grande Reserva that you’ll receive in February – a wine that combines elegance and freshness with great richness and depth.

2021 – the vintage

First, the weather – it was a mild year, an unusual one too, due to an atypical rainfall – it fell in June and the end of September. We were exceedingly lucky to have brought in the last lot of grapes just before a heavy downpour in September. With cooler temperatures than we are used to, our white wines are excellent, with a core of intense, crisp fruit. Our red wines are also very good – more elegance and freshness than other years, and alcohol levels will be lower too. With the recent effects of global warming and the higher temperatures it brings, it makes a refreshing change.

Harvest on our Quinta do Casal Branco estate commenced on 4th August (just for the whites, of course) and finished on 17th September, literally just before the rains.

The great Centenário Grande Reserva

Your wine comprises a field blend from the special 100-year-old vineyard, so frowned upon by the authorities due to the equally ancient olive trees that are planted among it. We feel it all adds to the character and wouldn’t have it any other way.

Harvest is as you’d expect of this very old site – all handpicked into small boxes and sorted again, bunch by bunch, at the cellar to ensure the very finest quality. The grape blend is very similar to the preceding vintages – around half ancient Castelão, with Alicante Bouschet, two grapes that are prized in our region – plus, this time, a small amount of Petit Verdot. That is unusual, but we wanted an extra bit of weight and depth and knew this excellent, albeit younger parcel, of the unusual Bordeaux variety would do the job perfectly.

As you know, the grapes are trodden by foot in the ancient lagares – the open, stone tanks. This is a very old tradition, prized in our best wines for obtaining all the colour and depth of flavour, without picking up the harsh tannins. The grapes start their initial fermentation in these great, shallow, stone troughs, but a few days in, the liquid and their skins, pips etc, are transferred into concrete vessels to finish the fermentation. We let the batches go through their malolactic process there too, before settling out the liquid and transferring it all into French oak barrels. 35% of those barriques are new, so you can see we are aiming for a serious style of wine that can age if you wish it to.

I tasted the finished wine as it went into bottle, many times in fact, and here is my note:

Centenário Grande Reserva 2021 is a powerful wine that expresses in a unique way the identity of our centenary vineyard. It opens with forward aromas of intense berry fruit, mainly dark berries, with generous spice – cinnamon, clove, as well as creamy oak. On taste, it’s a wine that fills up the mouth with velvety black fruit, mature, rounded tannins, particularly important as it denotes a wine with promising ageing potential, plus dark chocolate and tobacco notes from the oak. A wine of real complexity, elegance and sophistication that only old vineyards can provide, with the potential to become a truly extraordinary wine. Open early and decant, or cellar a few years.

Other highlights:

At Casal Branco, we are strongly committed to our environmental sustainability. To this end, we are calculating our carbon footprint for the whole process – from the vineyard to its consumption.

Our projects include the collection and re-use of rainwater and wastewater, so it can be treated and reused – on the vines, in the gardens and cleaning the equipment. We also will increase the energy produced by the estate, by harnessing our plentiful sunshine.

In the vineyard, we are planting 11 more hectares using the classic method known in France as Sélection Massale. It means taking cuttings from the prized old vines in our Centenário vineyard, growing them on in our nursery and planting them on special rootstocks in this new vineyard. It means we safeguard the genetics of our cherished old vineyard.

We are also planting more of the white grape Arinto, a variety that has exceptional acidity, which makes a lot of sense with the higher temperatures and warmth at our estate. And finally, we are increasing our plantings of Sousão, a red variety that has excellent colour and freshness. All good news.

Our other progression is from the 2022 vintage onwards, we will have official vegan certification. We have in the past used egg whites to fine our best wines, but not anymore – it’s all plant-based material or we simply allow the sediment to naturally drop to the bottom, if time allows.

I will leave the last word to my boss, José Lobo, who was over with you last September at the special Vineyard Partner’s event:

“The Vineyard Partner festival was an incredible moment to gather information and just feel the pulse of our customers. It was an amazing reassurance for our work and hope for the future”

Best wishes,

Joana Lopes

Winemaker