Named, Therefore Known
TASTING NOTES: “Flavor of dark fruits, a touch of red current and floral notes. A wine with a fine, fruity spicy palate. Balanced structure with soft tannins.” (AbV 14%, pH 3.77, TA 5.8 g/l)
VARIETALS: 100% Touriga Nacional
BARRELS: Not specified.
PAIRS WITH: N/A
THAT REMINDS ME OF: “Jovem” — Portuguese for “young vines” —
Hans Jörg Böhm showed up in Portugal in the late 1970s and essentially said: I think there are about 300 grape varieties here that nobody has properly written down. And he was right. This is the viticultural equivalent of arriving at a library and going, “has anyone actually catalogued these books?” Three hundred varieties. Just sitting there. Growing. Being fermented into wine by people who knew exactly what they were doing with them and did not necessarily need a German viticulturist to come tell them so — but here’s the thing about cataloguers: they can’t help themselves.
Taxonomy has this strange compulsion built into it. The Linnaean project — Carolus Linnaeus, the 18th-century Swedish botanist who gave us the binomial naming system still in use today — was similarly irresistible to the man who conceived it. He classified roughly 7,700 plant species and 4,400 animal species, named himself Homo sapiens (bold move), and kept going until he ran out of time rather than subjects. The compulsion isn’t really about the things being named. It’s about the namer’s need to impose a grid on the world before the world gets away from them. Böhm found 300 varieties. Linnaeus named himself. Same energy.
The daughter inherited the project and pushed further. There’s something quietly radical about that — not just continuing a parent’s work but launching it into new territory, introducing the first single varietal wines in Portugal in 2001. The vines on this bottle are young. The family’s grip on what those vines could become is anything but.
ICYMI, you have two choices:
- Worried Summer heat might get to your wine before your wine gets to you? Order from the sale linked here, and we’ll get it to you at a cooler time of year!
- Want it shipped now? Every package during the summer will have protected temp control ground shipping for much of the country that takes longer but will ensure safe delivery. Expect up to two weeks for delivery. Now through the September 12th offer.
