Profetas e Villoes Tinta Negra Dos Villoes 2022

Tinta Negra dos Villoes is a red wine made with the Tinta Negra variety by Antonio Maçanita and Nuno Faria from their vineyards on the Island of Porto Santo, Madeira, Portugal. This variety, Tinta Negra, is hardly grown outside Madeira, although it is also found in very small quantities in Colares (where it is called Molar) or in Azores (where it is known as Saborinho). The name of the wine, Tinta Negra dos Villoes, refers to the demonym of Maderienses by Portosanteños, that is what they call them. It is harvested on the Island of Porto Santo in boxes of 20 kilos, they are selected on a table and a part is destemmed, leaving the other with a whole bunch. It ferments for 40 days and then spends 8 months in French oak barrels. We all know about Madeira's fortified wines, and the oldest in Porto Santo say that it was there where the grapes with more maturity and grade were grown to make the largest Madeiras. On this Island of Porto Santo today there are barely 14 hectares of old vines cultivated by a handful of crazy people and prophets, which is what the people of Porto Santo are called in the archipelago. It is something worth seeing how the vineyards protect themselves from the wind with small walls, or by driving the grapes well below. This is the case of the farm from which Listrao dos Prophets comes from, a vineyard over 80 years old planted on calcareous and sandy loam soils that are harvested in August, manually and fermented in used Burgundian barrels, without the participation of sulfur. A natural Madeiran wine, therefore, with an almost coppery golden colour, a very intense nose, with salt and caramel. Perhaps between a Madeira and a Jerez, it shows iron, iodine, it is intense. Great body, super concentration, a lot of persistence.