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Magic valley reveals a rare treasure

A limited edition tawny port is the ideal drop to toast a meeting with one of Portugal's most inspirational winemakers.

Jane Faulkner

The spectacular Douro Valley in Portugal.
The spectacular Douro Valley in Portugal.Supplied

No panoramic photograph does it justice. No description captures its essence or encapsulates its rugged beauty. So nothing really prepares you for a first glimpse of Portugal's Douro Valley, a region classified by the United Nations as a World Heritage Site.

Wine lovers know it as the traditional home of port, although the landscape is changing.

Among all that, there's Dirk Niepoort. Nothing quite prepares me for a meeting with this fifth-generation wine producer, arguably Portugal's most influential and inspiring.

Family tradition: Winemaker Dirk Niepoort.
Family tradition: Winemaker Dirk Niepoort.Supplied
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What was supposed to be a barrel tasting – and maybe a discussion over lunch at Quinta de Napoles, the family estate in Cima Corgo, the heart of the Douro – turns into a two-day immersion in Niepoort's extraordinary array of table wines, ports with requisite doses of culture and philosophising, plus drinking some of the world's greatest labels. It's about context. It's the wine world according to Dirk, who comes from a family of dreamers.

Let's put this all in context.

Since 1842, the name Niepoort has been synonymous with premium port, but it was only in 1987, when Dirk joined the family business, that it bought its own vineyards, the then-rundown Quinta de Napoles (now a state-of-the-art winery for its table wines). A year later, the family bought Quinta do Carril, home to its port production. As with many traditional producers, Niepoort was a port shipper, buying its wines from contract growers in the Douro region and then ageing, blending and creating the ports at its cellar in Porto's Vila Nova de Gaia.

Quinta de Napoles takes in a glorious vista of terraced vineyards at different altitudes. However, not all Niepoort's grapes are destined to produce port wines. Dirk is single-handedly credited with spearheading the charge for the Douro Valley's table wines. And it came about by happenstance.

In 1988, Niepoort's German importer gave him a special bottle, vintage 1938. It turned out Dirk's grandfather, Eduard Marius, bought some red Douro wine for his workers, but he liked it so much that he kept a barrel of this '38 and bottled it. Seven more bottles were later found in Niepoort's cellar.

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"My father said, 'Oh, your grandfather, in the 1960s, he used to open those bottles for French people; it was a nice but silly gesture. The wine will be over the hill. Dead. Don't bother opening it.' But I did and it was absolutely stunning,' Dirk says.

"Every single one of those bottles was unbelievable, not perfect wines but amazing. I kept thinking, what would this wine have been like if it had been made properly from really good grapes? I had such admiration for that wine and it made me realise that there's great potential for wine, not just port, in the Douro. I dreamed of making such a wine. But the great vineyards for port are not necessarily great for wine."

That's why Dirk began searching for north-facing, higher-altitude vineyards. Many of his fellow producers thought him crazy not realising the 45 degrees during the day and 28 degrees at night in the growing season and lead-up to harvest was confined to the middle and lower parts of the slope, perfect for port wines, while higher, it was few degrees cooler and the temperature would fall dramatically to about 14 degrees at night. That diurnal fluctuation is so important for the grapes to retain acidity, resulting in lower alcohol levels and better balance in the wines, Dirk says.

In 1990, Dirk made the first Douro table wine called robustus. It was never released, but the following year Redoma was born.

"It's a wine that doesn't want to be the most elegant in the world, nor does it want to be rustic ... Redoma is the most authentic and typical Douro wine we make," he says.

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The day after visiting the Douro, an extraordinary tasting takes place at Niepoort's latest acquisition, Quinta de Baixo in the Bairrada wine region, an hour south of Porto.

Dirk has lined up every Redoma vintage made from the inaugural 1991 through to the yet-unfinished 2011. Vertical tastings are a perfect way to understand the evolution of a wine, but also it offers an appreciation of vintage and what the winemaker was attempting.

Redoma is a blend of many indigenous varieties, mainly tinta amarela, touriga franca, tinta roriz, tinto cao and touriga nacional, sourced from mostly north-facing vineyards that are very old – from 60 to 120 years.

"I think there is a line to all these wines and we just got better and better at making Redoma. There are some characteristics that always stay the same," Dirk says.

It's a Douro character. It's partly a perfume – a heady mix of Mediterranean herbs, especially the ubiquitous sticky esteva plant, plus a sensation on the palate, but also, and slightly more intangible, an energy. While the younger wines are on the whole more complete, defying the odds is the stunning 1991. A pretty wine that's very much alive with fine, silky tannins, and it still has a core of plum fruit with orange zest mixed with Asian spice and pepper.

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"I'm proud of this line-up," Dirk says. "In the future, though, they will be more pure, have more definition and be more Douro than they are at the moment."

How do you finish such a tasting? A celebratory lunch with more Niepoort reds and whites plus a complex 1955 vintage port and the ultra-rare VV – vinho velho (old wine), a special bottling of tawny port released last year to celebrate Niepoort's 170th anniversary. Only 999 bottles were produced because its base wine is from 1863. The VV has been lauded by some as the finest tawny made. It's exquisite. A fitting end to Dirk's Redoma retrospective, too, because the VV was created by his grandfather, who dreamed of making the best tawny in the world.

Niepoort's wines

Niepoort Vintage Port 2011 $240
Niepoort's vintage ports are wonderfully concentrated yet completely poised. The 2011 has a core of lovely bright berry and plum fruit, deep rich and round with a hint of florals plus plenty of warming spices: think cinnamon, cloves and Sichuan pepper. Complex with grainy fine tannins and lithe acidity. Superbly balanced. This will be a very long-lived port.

Niepoort Redoma Douro 2009 $125
Bursting with ripe dark concentrated fruit representative of the warm vintage yet so fresh and lively. Fragrant, rich with savoury nuances, plump and structured with powerful tannins, but it's not at all heavy. Really composed, even tight, with plenty of acidity driving this to a long finish.

Niepoort Redoma Douro 2011 (sample not yet released)
As this wine represented the next stage in Redoma's lifeline, made by Dirk and winemaker Carlos Raposo, who took over in 2011, it was included in the vertical tasting. It's a stunning, if unfinished, wine. It has the allure of youth, jubey and bright and with great natural acidity that makes my mouth water. Balanced with superb length, tannins are ripe, distinct, yet there's a fineness there. An utterly beguiling, pure expression of the Douro. This just might turn out to be the finest Redoma yet.

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