Last month, when my parents were in town visiting, I took them on one of my favorite local winery tours, the Manor House Museum Tour of José Maria da Fonseca. Easy to find on their website, this legendary Portuguese winery offers daily tours of the founder’s original estate and winery located in the town of Azeitão, just 40 minutes outside of Lisbon in the Terras de Sado wine region. For a small price, you can walk through the antique cellars that still hold their famous barrel-aged red, Periquita and their 100+ special reserve Moscatels de Setubal, while learning about their illustrious wine-making history. At the end, you offered a tasting of 2-3 wines, normally consisting of a white, red and Moscatel.

Being my second visit to the estate, and having already savored some of their whites and Moscatels before, I was looking forward to tasting a red. That paticular day, they had the 2004 Domini, their flagship Douro red produced under their Domingo Soares Franco label with the partnership of Christain Van Zeller of Quinta do Vale Dona Maria. This unfiltered wine aged three months in new oak is a blend of Touriga Nacional, Touriga Franca and Tinto Roriz (Tempranillo) and is a beautiful deep red-purple with the aroma of dark fruit, leather, earth and wild mushroom, which I love and have come to encounter in many Douro reds - reminding me of lovely right-bank Bordeaux reds. The palate is more of the dark fruit, plums and black currants with smooth but persistent tannins.

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