Touriga Nacional: the variety that completes the map in the Côa
The chain that began with Dona Antónia, passed through Cachão da Valeira, Forrester’s map and the Côa Valley, ends with one grape variety: Touriga Nacional.
The old vineyard at Palato has 46 varieties planted side by side, not all of them named, and it is from there that the Grande Reserva comes. The house was built that way: picked together, fermented together. Bottling one variety on its own runs against everything else.
A parcel and a net
There is a parcel planted only with Touriga Nacional. And in the winery, of the four ways red is fermented here, this wine takes the fourth: a lagar with a net that holds the solids down in the must through the whole fermentation, instead of letting them rise. The temperature stays between 24 and 26 °C — the lower step of the 22 to 30 the house uses for reds. Fermenting hotter extracts more colour and more tannin; here the opposite was chosen.
Twelve degrees
Every other red in the house is served between 15 and 18 °C. This one, between 12 and 14. It is not a footnote on a technical sheet: what you are after in this variety is violet, orange blossom and bergamot, and heat erases them. There are 2,000 bottles at 14%, aged in French oak — of all the house reds, only the Vinha da Migalha, a special edition of 380, is made in smaller numbers.
It closes the series because it is the one left most exposed. With no other varieties to correct it, whatever is in the bottle belongs to the year and the place.
Sources: Figures — production, alcohol, service temperature, ageing: the official technical sheet for Palato do Côa Touriga Nacional 2022, cross-checked against the estate’s structured catalogue. Winery — the four ways red is fermented, the net and the 24-26 °C: the winemakers’ knowledge base. The 46 varieties of the old vineyard come from the estate brochure.