Agenda 2014 Dao

Before buying this wine, I had been thinking about exploring the wines of Portugal. The only wine I had tried from Portugal is Porta 6, which is an easy drinking red. However, I was looking for a food wine from Portugal and I am very pleased with the one chose. It is called ‘Agenda 2014 Dao’.  As you know, I love to decant my red wines but I always smell and taste the wine prior to decanting it. The smell was horrible. It was all acetone with no fruit or vanilla at all. However, the taste of the wine, having been housed in oak came through clearly but no fruit. The wine was zingy and wakes up your taste buds, slightly acidic but not unpleasant.

After one and half hours in the decanter dinner was ready. The nose was less harsh, still not very pleasant but on the first swirl and sniff there was now raspberry. The taste was softer and more rounded without the zing and after spending time in the decanter the wine was pleasant enough to drink without food. That is so amazing!

I drunk this wine with Barnsley lamb chop, mashed potato, boiled baby carrots and broccoli. The chops were griddled and when resting balsamic vinegar and honey were put into the griddle to create a glaze for the chops. The chops were served with the glaze poured over them and then topped with chopped flat leaf parsley and rocket. The Maris Piper potatoes were mashed with butter, milk and Dijon mustard. Although gravy was made, it wasn’t needed because the meat was so succulent. My husband did not have carrots and broccoli but had marrowfat peas, which he said matched with the wine. There were charred flavours from the griddle and fat on the chop and the wine stood up to both these flavours. Because the wine was quite light I didn’t expect it to cope with the fat on the lamb, but it was magnificent. The wine matched the food well. I loved it. Although it was difficult not to finish the bottle, especially between two of us, I was very disciplined because I wanted to smell and taste it the next day. I’m glad I did because the nose was totally different after 24 hours in the decanter. It was soft and rounded with a lot of raspberry. It no longer fostered an involuntary cough when inhaled and the taste was all cherry and vanilla, quite beautiful. This is such an interesting wine. I will definitely buy it again but will decant it for 24 hours next time.

The names of the three grape varieties in this wine are new to me. They are Touriga Nacional, a low yield grape but considered by many as one of Portugal’s finest grapes. Alfrocheiro, a Portuguese grape variety planted primarily in the Dao region known for the deep red colour that it gives the wine and Tinta Roriz (Tempranillo in Spanish, the name Tinta Roriz is used in the Doa region) which gives the red fruit flavours.

I purchased it from Majestic Wine, Poole and paid £7.99 Click here to buy this wine!

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