Luis Seabra Xisto Illimitado Branco 2024
A bright, lifted palate shows flavours of freshly picked nectarines, peaches and pears, all against a complex backdrop of wet stone and chalk. Graceful and powerful all at once, with a salty, savoury complexity and a compellingly chewy texture which runs through to the lengthy finish.
The grapes come from vines between thirty and sixty years old planted on schist soils in the Cima Corgo. They produce low yields of around twenty-five hectolitres per hectare. The grapes were hand-harvested.
Ninety percent of the grapes were fermented in used barrels with the remaining ten percent fermented in stainless steel, using indigenous yeast. The wine was then given one year of lees contact with no batonnage.
Luis Seabra may be a new name on the Portuguese wine scene, but he has already had a hand in crafting some of the Douro’s most exciting wines, working as Dirk Niepoort’s right-hand man from 2004 until leaving to set up his own label in 2012. He started small, releasing two whites and one red, with a total production of just 5,000 bottles per wine. The range has since grown but quantities remain small-scale. Winemaking is minimal-intervention, and the style very much reflects the concentration of care lavished by this experienced winemaker on his tiny output.
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