Tasting - Soalheiro Alvarinho 1ª Vinhas 2006

Long time no see... :) I have been away for almost 3 months... work and some other stuff didn't allow me to post in this long... long period.... tasted some good things thow!

Last Friday the four of us (founders of this sharing space) joined Almeida's family, my girlfriend and a couple (Joana and Pedro) of friends of us and had a great dinner! Celebrating Almeida´s weekend in the north and mostly celebrating Ricardo being back from Chile (finally.... wellcome back my friend...) and tasted 8 (I think) different wines... Hope we can distribute from the 4 of us the different posts... at least some! I'm sure everyone remembers all the wines... (or maybe not!)

First one to be tasted was a Vinho Verde from Melgaço made of Alvarinho, a grape variety that I really appreciate, specially when coming from this area where it shows its best potential. It's a «joint venture» of Dirk Niepoort (known from his Douro and Port Wines) and Luis Cerdeira from Soalheiro! The Cerdeira family have been producing wines since the beginning of the 80's and most of their wines show a huge aging potential... It's said that Dirk and Luis were tasting all the grapes from Soalheiro and the oldest vine (1 ha with more than 25 years old) showed higher quality. So they decided to separate those grapes and fermented them the slower they could (it took 4 months) and at the lowest temperature... fermentation occured in stainless steel and aging too on the lees. The result is a citric coloured wine showing mineral, smoky (although the wine is not aged in the wood) notes and a very elegant aroma. In the mouth it has a big volume, very good citric acidity, orange peel and lime notes. Long aftertaste. It's a very very very good Alvarinho, one of those that I believe that can last for a long period (around 10 years old).... good thing for me... I have another 4 bottles still...:) 3000 were produced... I don´t know the price... can someone help??? 90 Points

PS - We should have a better picture... but they are on Almeida's camera... so I stole this from the Internet...