Touriga Nacional

Touriga Nacional is the finest red grape Portugal has, and its reputation was built inside a fortified wine before it ever had a dry one. It is one of the five recommended varieties for Port, and it is the one that supplies the perfume and the tannic backbone that lets a vintage Port age for fifty years.

The vine is difficult in a specific way: it is very vigorous, so it puts its energy into leaves and shoots, and the natural crop is tiny. Historically that made it uneconomic, and plantings in the Douro fell until clonal selection work in the 1980s produced vines that yielded enough to justify the row. The berries are small and thick skinned, which is where the colour and the tannin come from.

The aroma is what marks it out: violets, bergamot and black fruit, unusually floral for a wine this dark and structured. Dão, in the granite hills inland, is its other home and gives a finer and more perfumed version than the hot Douro schist. Dry Douro reds built on it are now among Portugal's best wines, and Australia and Spain have started planting it for its heat tolerance.