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Luis Pato Vinhas Velhas Branco 2006

Looking for a dry white wine with real personality? One that inhabits a different firmament from that populated by the Chardonnays, Sauvignons and Pinot Grigios of this world? Renowned Portuguese producer Luis Pato may have just the thing for you.
 
Pato is the guy who put Bairrada on the modern map and then quarrelled with the authorities there who he thought were being too lax with the rules, allowing non-traditional grape varieties and the like, so now prefers to use the general appellation Vinho Regional Beiras rather than Bairrada.
 
Although his reds have arguably had more press, he is a very fine white winemaker too, as this blend of 50% of the Bairrada white grape Bical, 30% Cerceal and 20% Sercialinho (these last two bearing some relation to the Sercial of Madeira) proves. All of them old vines, or vinhas velhas.

This is very serious wine, grown in Pato’s own chalky-clay and sandy soils and aged in new Allier large 650-litre barrels, it is clearly meant for ageing (see my recent notes on his white Vinha Formal 1998 here) but is already drinking well. All the relevant grape varieties make wines that are famously long-lived so I would recommend this for the cellar as well as for the table now with substantial food – a good roast chicken perhaps. (Not perhaps the duck, pato in Portuguese, which has been cut out of the label here, and of the red Vinhas Velhas).