Robe — Pale, faded garnet, like red silk left in the sea light
dried red cherry
iron
sea spray
cistus
old cedar
Palate
Pale but fierce — iron-salty tannin and acidity built to outlive its drinkers
Ageing
10–50 years and beyond
Serving
14–16 °C, decanted, with patience
Colares is Europe's ghost vineyard. When phylloxera ravaged the continent, the dune sand west of Sintra proved one of the very few soils the louse could not burrow through, and ungrafted Ramisco — briefly famous, briefly precious — supplied a phylloxera-proof red while the rest of Europe replanted on American roots. Its vines still grow on their own roots today.
Everything about it is defiance. Planting means digging metres through the sand to reach the clay beneath; the vines then crawl along the ground behind reed fences against the Atlantic gales. Twenty-odd hectares survive against the advancing suburbs of Lisbon's coast, producing a wine that is pale, iron-salty and nearly eternal — the taste of pre-phylloxera Europe, still on sale.