Portugal’s Palace Wine fit for a King

It is green country, the green of long grass, wild brush and, in season, the verdant foliage of old oak trees and expansive vineyards upon which all kinds of grapes ripen to make the wines of Bairrada in Portugal. There are pigs here too, and when the pigs have given birth to the little pigs, energetic farmers ferry the piglets to the nearby village of Mealhada, where – once killed – the small pigs are lovingly roasted to a golden crisp and served with a sauce made from wine and garlic, and white pepper. It is very good.

This is the region where the Palacio Buçaco is found, a former palace and a lavish design of rural gothic that now serves as a hotel. And since 1917, wine has been made at the palace, only two wines, of which one is red and one is white.

I have visited this piece of Portuguese country, and it is indeed fine. North-east of Lisbon, it nears the mountains of the east but is still influenced by the Atlantic Ocean on the west, making this place of Bairrada cold and wet, and because it is very wet, it is very green. Especially when the sky is blue and sunny, then it looks greener still, and the pigs appear very white as they nurse their little piglets among the green grass waiting for the pig-farmers to arrive to take the small critters to the house of animal killing.

It is a place that is imprinted on memory, and once all the fine things of Portugal are imprinted on memory, there is not much room for anything else, because it is as good and as fine a part of the world as any. Especially, when it is green and the sky is blue, and you walk up the gravel path and your feet crunch on the small stones as you present yourself to the Palacio Buçaco to drink the wine.

Of all the wine of Buçaco and of Portugal, and of most of the world, it is the white wine from Buçaco that I love so very much, and will continue to do so. As it is imprinted on memory, ensuring that I can never forget it. Which I do not do, as when nights are long and I hear the mountain springs of Bairrada and see the green, all that green, I taste the white wine of Buçaco, for which I long.

The wine is made at the Palacio, and from three grape varieties originating from two regions, both which – incidentally – are green.

Bical and Maria Gomes grapes grow on the vines in the Bairrada region, with its deep mushy clay soils and hard chunks of rock. These two grapes are used to compose the Buçaco white, along with another grape called Encruzado. This variety, which reflects the layered fruit complexity of Chardonnay, grows well in the region of Dão, which neighbours Bairrada, yet is country of a lesser green and fewer pigs, but with good stony, rocky soils, fine for viticulture.

And it is this Encruzado from Dão that is taken to the Palace, where it is blended with Maria Gomes and Bical to make the Buçaco white wine. The juice is fermented and then it flows to new barrels of French oak, where it ages beneath the palace in a space that is dark and cool, until the wine is ready for bottling.

The bottle, clear glass, has worn the same label since 1920, each vintage simply specified with a coin-shaped white sticker.

Since my first engagement with this wine, I can state that it is a superb white wine, one to be appreciated with a feeling of being blessed to have the opportunity to taste and drink it. It is a blessing I felt recently when accessing the Buçaco from the 2017 vintage, an eight-year-old wine of magnificence and stature, beautiful and pristine in its current form, but a wine that will age to greater heights over the next two decades.

The beauty lies in the wine’s completeness, its delivering of everything a lover of white wine can wish for. Like a Chet Baker trumpet-solo, a Sydney Sweeny advertisement or a Michelangelo carving from Carrara marble, everything is in synch, in place and tuning-fork precise.

Smell it, and there is green and wet rock and heavy ocean fog slowly reaching landfall. It is crisp, and salty and smells like the crack of dawn on a fine autumn day.

Heavenly as the aroma is, the taste does not disappoint. A tang of clean steel and sharp lemon – characters of the Bica grape – ensures the wine enters the palate with an honest vigour, sustaining the other features throughout the experience of drinking. Maria Gomes brings a confident presence with dollops of loquat, persimmon peel and a sliver of salted guava.

And then, on the mouth, the Encruzado arrives bringing sun and warmth, precocious with nuts and Key Lime and, interesting this, a perfumed taint of ultra virgin olive oil.

All these tastes are cloaked in a regal, monumental presence making for an accurate, sublime expression of white wine bearing memories of time and place, of a broad green country and its sound of rocks and gravel, all older than us, which – like the memory of Buçaco – will be things of foreverness.