Tinta Barroca

Tinta Barroca is one of the five varieties officially recommended for Port, and it is the one nobody talks about. Its role in the blend is structural and practical rather than aromatic: it ripens early, accumulates sugar readily, and produces deeply coloured, soft, generously fruity wine with relatively low acidity.

In a blend dominated by the firmer Touriga Nacional and Touriga Franca, that softness is useful. Tinta Barroca fills out the mid-palate, contributes colour, and makes young Port approachable. It is a component grape in the truest sense, and it is very rarely bottled alone.

The vine has a real weakness: it suffers badly in heat. It is usually planted on north-facing slopes and at higher, cooler elevations in the Douro, because on a hot south-facing terrace the fruit raisins on the vine and the wine turns jammy and flat. As Douro summers have grown hotter this has become a more pressing problem, and plantings have declined.

Where it is bottled as a single variety — occasionally in the Douro as a dry table wine, and in South Africa's Swartland, where a little was planted long ago — it gives a full, dark, plummy red with soft tannin and a slightly rustic, earthy edge.

Its flavour profile runs to black plum, blackberry, dried fig and a faint resinous note. It is not a grape that rewards long ageing on its own account; its contribution is to a blend that does.