Quinta da Lixa Escudo Real Vinho Verde

About

Owned and operated operated by the Meireles family from the town of Vila da Lixa since the mid-1980s, Quinta da Lixa began its life as a cellar-door vendor of what the locals lovingly called o tal vinho da Lixa – ‘that Lixa wine’. The family had great foresight in acquiring estate vineyard land early on and over the ensuing decades, ensuring an increasingly consistent source of high-quality and relatively low-cost estate-grown grapes. The 1990s saw the construction of a new winery devoted to transitioning the family business from bulk local-market sales to estate bottling. Another piece of the puzzle was completed in the early 2000s with the hiring of Carlos Teixeira, a local who had left town to make his name as one of Portugal’s most respected oenologists. He’s still at the helm of this beloved winery today, producing textbook Vinhos Verdes at an unimpeachable level of quality for the very modest pricepoint.

Quinta da Lixa Escudo Real Vinho Verde is a blend of 35% Loureiro (whose inviting, aromatic character dominates the blend), 35% Arinto, and 30% Trajadura. This is a textbook example of the style that has brought Vinho Verde to prominence: a kiss of residual sugar to balance out the crisp, Atlantic acidity, all enveloped in a comforting embrace of creamy petillance.