UK Launch of Quinta do Noval and Quinta do Passadouro 2023 Vintage Ports, 2024 White and 2022 Red Wines

[Alex Bridgeman]

Shortly after announcing that they will be releasing three Vintage Ports from 2023, Quinta do Noval arranged to show their wines to press and buyers. This year the chosen venue was a (rather dark) room at the Connaught Hotel, Mayfair.

Carlos Agrellos (left) and Christian Seely (right)

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The wines were presented by Christian Seely and Carlos Agrellos, and were:

• Quinta do Passadouro Branco 2024,
• Cedro do Noval Reserva Branco 2024,
• Quinta do Noval Reserva Branco 2024,
• Cedro do Noval Tinto 2022,
• Quinta do Noval Touriga Nacional 2022,
• Quinta do Noval Terroir Series Vinhas do Passadouro 2021,
• Quinta do Passadouro 2023 Vintage Port,
• Quinta do Noval 2023 Vintage Port, and
• Quinta do Noval Nacional 2023 Vintage Port

Lunch provided an opportunity to taste a few more mature editions of these wines with food. Accompanying lunch were:

• Quinta do Noval Cedro Branco 2023,
• Quinta do Noval Cedro Reserva Branco 2023,
• Quinta do Noval Reserva Branco 2023.
• Quinta do Noval Reserva Branco 2021,
• Quinta do Noval Touriga Nacional 2020,
• Quinta do Noval Reserva 2018,
• Quinta do Noval Terroir Series Vinhas da Marka 2019,
• Quinta do Noval Colheita 2007,
• Quinta do Noval 2000 VIntage Port, and
• Quinta do Noval Nacional 2000 Vintage Port

[Alex Bridgeman]

The wines came in flights, with the first three wines being the white wines from 2024. (Sadly, UK customs managed to intercept and hold up the samples of Cedro do Noval Branco 2024 so the intended 4 wines became 3.)

The 2023-24 viticultural year started with a mild, wet winter which refilled the aquifers and was followed by a mild spring which allowed the vines to wake gently and not suffer any significant shocks. The summer was hot, but not abnormally so, and harvest included a couple of short spells of rain that were easily navigated around. Carlos Agrellos described the year as one where "it all went perfectly" and was a year which delivered great quality fruit. (When pressed on the 2024 Port vintage, Carlos and Christian were appropriately vague and non-committal but Christian did remark that Quinta do Noval made a Vintage Port in 2007 and every harvest since then.) Around 15% of the table wine made in the Douro is white.

Pouring the first wine

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We started with the 2024 Quinta do Passadouro Branco . This is made exclusively from grapes purchased from long-standing partner farmers. The wine delivers a wonderful, sweet tropical fruit nose. By contrast, the palate is a surprise, fresh and crisp with a lovely mineral core to the steely fruit. This is a wine successfully made to show the delicacy and elegance of the fruit. 89/100.A blend of 30% Viosinho, 20% Código de Larinho, 20% Gouveio, 15% Rabigato and 15% Arinto, aged mostly in stainless steel with 30% of the wine aged in new and used oak.

This was followed with the 2024 Cedro do Noval Reserva Branco. First made in 2023, this is the second vintage of this wine. Made from purchased grapes grown on the Alijó plateau, the selection of grapes being based on the aromaticity of the Viosinho and Gouveio grown there. The wine has a floral perfume on the nose, a nose which is soft and restrained. Floral perfume on the palate, wrapped in elegant fruit which holds a little more oak - the oak mostly hidden but showing on the tannins on the late palate. The wine has a delicious finish, a lovely mineral core and a gentle grip. Good persistence. 90/100. 55% Viosinho, 45% Gouveio, 65% fermented and matured in stainless steel, 20% new oak and 15% in 1 year old oak.

The final white in the flight was the 2024 Quinta do Noval Reserva Branco, a wine first made in 2021. This wine is made exclusively from grapes planted at Noval in 2005, grown at high altitude with an average altitude of 450m and facing south-southwest, exposed to the heat of the day yet tempered by exposure to the wind, which reduces the extremes of the heat. 65% Viosinho and 35% Gouveio. Fermented and matured in new oak (55%) and second-fill oak.

The wine has a hint of the oak on the sweet fruit of the nose yet is acidic and steely on the palate, a little austere with the oak showing clearly. A little buttery, a few tannins, but with the acidity and some austere and reserved fruit emerging on the mid-palate. A little grip on the steely fruit on the finish. 89/100.

Carlos Agrellos, the winemaker, believes the Reserva Branco will age well and that it has everything needed to do so.

[Alex Bridgeman]

The next flight was the red wines. Happily, all four of these had made it successfully through customs.

Most of the red wines were from the 2022 vintage. This was a viticultural year which was exceptionally dry, similar to 2020. The advantage of a very dry year was that there was little disease pressure on the vines but in 2020 some of the Touriga Franca grapes has started to shrivel. Having learned from the earlier year, harvesting started a little earlier than normal in 2022 and all of the Touriga Franca was picked before any damage done. 2022 was an unusual year for the winemaking team because they were making white wine, red wine and Port at the same time in August! The quality of the grapes was exceptional, with less than 0.5% being rejected at the sorting table.

The regulations for Douro DOC wines stipulate the grape varieties that can be used. 2022 Cedro do Noval Tinto is not — and never has been — a Douro DOC wine since it contains 25% Syrah and that is not one of the permitted varieties. For this reason, it is classified as an IGP (Indicação Geográfica Protegida) wine and not DOC. The rest of the blend is Touriga Nacional (37%), Touriga Franca (25%), Tinta Cão (8%) and Tinta Roriz (5%). Each varietal is fermented and aged separately in 225 litre French oak barrels (15% new) for 11 months with the final blend being put together a month before being bottled.

Red wines lined up with the Cedro Tinto on the left

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Warm red fruit on the fruit forward nose; crisp fruit on the palate with liquorice tannins. The fruit is a little austere, although ripe and with good grip. Lovely fruit finish, great length with a moderately bitter rose tone in the fruit. I was surprised how serious a wine this was considering it is the entry level red offering from Noval. 88/100.

Between 1994, when AXA acquired the estate, and 2004 Quinta do Noval undertook a major replanting project and replaced about 100 hectares. These vines are now mature and producing excellent quality fruit — and is the basis for this 2022 Quinta do Noval Touriga Nacional. Aged for 11 months in 20% new and 80% used French oak barrels of 225 litres. Sweet violet on the nose, gentle and attractive. Glorious fruit on the palate with harmony and purity. A gorgeous interplay with the oak perfectly framing the wine. Elegant but with weight and seriousness. 92/100.

2022 Quinta do Noval Reserva Tinto. This wine has been produced for many years but since the 2020 vintage it has included fruit from a parcel of field blend old (80+ years) vines. In the case of the 2022 vintage, 26% of the blend is from this parcel - a parcel that includes over 30 varieties that have been identified and perhaps as many again as are not yet identified. The wine has a wonderful nose, with a palate taught and coiled like a shiny spring. The wonderful complexity of the palate comes through with a little patience, before a superb finish framed by gentle, ripe tannins. This really is an excellent wine which should age beautifully. 93/100. The blend is 42% Touriga Nacional, 32% Touriga Franca and 26% Old Vines. Matured in 50% new oak and 50% 1 year old oak for 12 months.

[mcoulson]

Very interesting read ... Sounds like a fun day at the office ... Looking forward to the next instalment

[Christopher]

Very much enjoying this
I like the Noval whites very much, interesting to see the developments with Cedro. It’s an excellent white. It’s the first time I had noticed a Cedro Reserva. That was I think previously a Noval Reserva and there was just one Cedro.

[Alex Bridgeman]

The final red wine was something a little bit special, with a suggested retail of circa £230 per bottle. Occasionally, the winemaking team at Noval discover a parcel of grapes which has performed extraordinarily well in a year and decide to vinify and age them separately. The first time I discovered the Terroir Series was the 2019 Vinhas da Marka, this was my first taste of the 2021 Vinhas do Passadouro.

Vinhas de Passadouro

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The parcel of grapes from Passadouro that is used to make the Vinhas do Passadouro is just over 0.9 hectares of very old vines with a north-west exposure at an altitude of 300-320 metres. The exact age of the vines isn't known, but what is known is that when the IVP documented the location and nature of the vineyards in the Douro region in 1930-31, this was one of the vineyards noted in that first record, so at least 94 years old at the time of the vintage. The venerable age of the vines means they yield very small quantities of grapes — 1-3 bunches per vine or 12-15 hectolitres per hectare. The vines are harvested in 1 pass, which takes about a morning to complete. Interestingly, the vines include some white grapes (which are included in the wine) and some table grapes (which do not get vinified).

The 2021 Quinta do Noval, Terroir Series Vinhas do Passadouro is bold and full of self-confidence. With bramble and liquorice on the nose, although the oak does show a little. Smooth on the palate with a very firm grip, bright fruit shines on the palate with a delightful complexity. Pure fruit and dark chocolate on the infinitely long finish. The wine has a fabulous texture. Really very impressive. 95/100.

[Alex Bridgeman]

The viticultural year of 2023 saw a warm and wet winter, with the year as a whole being warmer than average. There were some problems with severe thunderstorms in May and June which caused storm damage to the grapes in some parts of the Douro although Quinta do Noval was spared. Water was plentiful, so much so that the year was the 3rd wettest out of the last 24 years leading to the vines needing several treatments to prevent infection. Growers who were able to do the required treatments had healthy grapes in the Autumn.

The grapes were in good condition when harvested, despite the frequent rains in September which interrupted the harvest several times to wait for the weather to improve — very stressful for the winemaking team! The harvest finished in good weather and yielded grapes with good phenolic ripeness making very good wines from a number of different parcels. Noval fermented these parcels in small, separate vinifications to be able to monitor and track the quality of the wines over the next few months.

3 vintage Ports from 2023

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There are three 2023 vintage Ports from Quinta do Noval being offered to the UK market. The first we tasted was the 2023 Quinta do Passadouro Vintage Port. 555 cases (of 9 litres) were made from grapes picked in early September, the harvest of Port grapes taking place from 4-8th September. The grapes were foot-trodden in stone lagares. The wine is a blend of six different lots and is predominantly Touriga Francesa, Touriga Nacional, Sousão, Tinta Francisca and a parcel of field blend wines. The wine shows the Vale de Mendiz style of fruit, with a lovely freshness and ripeness. There is a lovely purity of fruit on the palate, with very gentle tannins providing an elegant core to the wine. Glorious and languid with dark cherry and milk chocolate. This is drinking beautifully today with a delightful finesse and balance but will age with grace and elegance. 91/100.

We moved on to the 2023 Quinta do Noval with 2023 being a successful harvest for Noval’s Ports with 6-7% of the quinta’s output meeting the exacting standards required to be blended into Vintage Port. 2,280 cases (of 9 litres) were made from grapes picked over a 2 week period from 10-25th September. This wine is a blend from 12 parcels which make the most of the variety of altitude and micro-climates. 2 of the parcels come from the west facing vinyards overlooking the Roncão Valley with the other 10 facing the Vale de Mendiz and the Pinhão river. The wine was fermented in granite lagares. This has a lovely grassy note on the nose, a little peppery to wake you up. It is restrained on the palate, but has a wonderful floral complexity and carries so many layers of fruit; slightly peppery (again) with immense depth yet also with beautiful finesse. Delightfully pure fruit shines on the aftertaste and there is an astonishing length to the finish. Such a beautiful wine and such a contrast the to the Passadouro, being bigger and with more depth. 94/100.

Noval Nacional 2023

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The final wine was the 2023 Quinta do Noval Nacional only 140 cases of this were made in 2023 with the grapes being picked in a single pass on the morning of 20th September. Quite a contrast to the regular 2023 Noval vintage Port. Remarkably restrained on the nose at first, but then a beautiful floral blackcurrant emerges. The firm grip on the palate is what makes it stand out from the regular vintage Port, with the tannins much more obvious. The fruit is a sweet black cherry and blackcurrant on the palate yet comes with a delightful floral core. The tannins are very firm but also very ripe creating a wonderful tension to the palate. Chewy, intense damson and blackcurrant cherry finish that is very sweet. A big wine, but very well balanced. 95/100.

[Alex Bridgeman]

Lunch, with accompanying wines

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The presentation of the new wines was followed by an opportunity to have lunch with Carlos Agrellos and Christian Seely and to ask them any questions we had. Lunch was also an opportunity to taste some older wines from Noval with food and a couple of back vintages of Quinta do Noval vintage Port. One interesting snippet I found out from Christian over lunch is that Quinta da Romaneira did not declare a Vintage Port in 2023.

We had an interesting discussion about Tinta Barroca as a grape variety. Tinta Barroca is a high yielding vine which, over the years they have been working together, Carlos and Christian have never decided to include in the wines sold under the Noval name. A few years ago, a decision was made to regraft a parcel of 20 year old Tinta Barroca vines and use their existing rootstock to create a new field blend vineyard. This year (2025) should see the first commercial harvest from these regrafted vines.

I took notes on all the Vintage Ports we drank over lunch and one or two of the more unusual wines.

2018 Quinta do Noval Vinho Tinto Reserva was pleasingly mature on the palate, smooth and with a big presence in the mouth. Big and delicious, it went very nicely with a rabbit and pistachio terrine. 93/100.

2019 was the first vintage of Vinhas da Marka

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2019 Quinta do Noval Terroir Series, Vinhas da Marka , made from grapes sourced from a vineyard owned by the Agrellos family, which shares a border with Quinta do Crasto. The vineyard was planted at the same time as Vinha de Ponte and Marie Theresa at Crasto. Given that the Marka vineyard appears on the first 1930-31 IVP listing of vineyards, it was probably planted as an old vine field blend sometime before 1930. Terroir Series Vinhas da Marka was also released in 2021, 2022 and 2023.

This wine has a ruby red colour with austere fruit on the nose. On the palate the fruit is pure and sweet, yet with wonderful acidity and gently gripping tannins that were perfect for cutting through the fattiness of a beef fillet with bone marrow sauce. The wine has a beautiful purity on the aftertaste and finish. Absolutely exquisite. 98/100.

Lunch rounded off with a selection of British and European cheeses — accompanied by some Port selected by Christian.

The three Ports served after dinner

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2007 Quinta do Noval Colheita, bottled 2025. Sweet with a gentle date nose, smooth onto the palate with honeyed fruit and just a slight sprinkling of tannins. Dry grip on the aftertaste, big and very long date and orange finish. 89/100.

2000 Quinta do Noval Vintage Port. Gentle mature fruit showing on the nose. Smooth fruit on the palate, poised with a lovely maturity and tannins which are beautifully integrated. A wonderfully harmonious wine with such an elegance and purity to it and with secondary influences just starting to show. 94/100.

2000 Quinta do Noval Nacional Vintage Port. Elegant with mature fruit on the nose. Very different on the palate from the 2000 Noval VP drunk alongside this wine with less sweetness to the fruit, more ripeness and purity. The tannins are more pronounced in the Nacional, delivering a wonderful and firm grip. A fountain of fruit flavours on the aftertaste, with strawberry supported by the dryness of the cocoa-powder tannins. Elegant, but full of self-confidence. A lovely wine. 94/100.

As a parting note, I hadn’t realised that these days Noval’s biggest market for Vintage Port is the US, which outgrew the UK some years ago.

[Alex Bridgeman]

Some pictures will be added to the new narrative once my phone is charged.

[Alex Bridgeman]

Pictures are now complete. Apologies for the delay in finishing the story - but it now is.

[mcoulson]

Thanks for doing all this Alex ... Very interesting read ...

[Glenn E.]

2000 Quinta do Noval Nacional Vintage Port. Elegant with mature fruit on the nose. Very different on the palate from the 2000 Noval VP drunk alongside this wine with less sweetness to the fruit, more ripeness and purity. The tannins are more pronounced in the Nacional, delivering a wonderful and firm grip. A fountain of fruit flavours on the aftertaste, with strawberry supported by the dryness of the cocoa-powder tannins. Elegant, but full of self-confidence. A lovely wine. 94/100.

We had this during our visit last month and I gave it the same score! Does that mean I under-scored it, or you over-scored it?

What I learned during that tasting is that, at least according to Carlos, Nacional is generally softer and fruitier than regular Noval. I had always thought that it was the other way around, and that Nacional was the bigger bruiser of a Port.

[Alex Bridgeman]

2000 Quinta do Noval Nacional Vintage Port. Elegant with mature fruit on the nose. Very different on the palate from the 2000 Noval VP drunk alongside this wine with less sweetness to the fruit, more ripeness and purity. The tannins are more pronounced in the Nacional, delivering a wonderful and firm grip. A fountain of fruit flavours on the aftertaste, with strawberry supported by the dryness of the cocoa-powder tannins. Elegant, but full of self-confidence. A lovely wine. 94/100.

We had this during our visit last month and I gave it the same score! Does that mean I under-scored it, or you over-scored it?

What I learned during that tasting is that, at least according to Carlos, Nacional is generally softer and fruitier than regular Noval. I had always thought that it was the other way around, and that Nacional was the bigger bruiser of a Port.

I usually find the grip on the Nacional bigger and firmer than on the regular, but I usually also find the fruit is just so much more persistent on the finish of the Nacional.

[Glenn E.]

2000 Quinta do Noval Nacional Vintage Port. Elegant with mature fruit on the nose. Very different on the palate from the 2000 Noval VP drunk alongside this wine with less sweetness to the fruit, more ripeness and purity. The tannins are more pronounced in the Nacional, delivering a wonderful and firm grip. A fountain of fruit flavours on the aftertaste, with strawberry supported by the dryness of the cocoa-powder tannins. Elegant, but full of self-confidence. A lovely wine. 94/100.

We had this during our visit last month and I gave it the same score! Does that mean I under-scored it, or you over-scored it?

What I learned during that tasting is that, at least according to Carlos, Nacional is generally softer and fruitier than regular Noval. I had always thought that it was the other way around, and that Nacional was the bigger bruiser of a Port.

I usually find the grip on the Nacional bigger and firmer than on the regular, but I usually also find the fruit is just so much more persistent on the finish of the Nacional.

Oh right, yeah, the "softer" applies to the fruits. He said that there are usually more fruits, but that they're a little softer and less boisterous than regular Noval. He did also say that the tannins on the Nacional were usually bigger but also usually smoother than for regular Noval.