Bairrada Red '21

São Lourenço is a producer from Bairrada — a wine region on Portugal’s Atlantic coast between Porto and Coimbra, where the maritime climate and clay-limestone soils provide an ideal foundation for structured, age-worthy red wines. This is a field blend of five varieties: Touriga Nacional, Merlot, Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Petit Verdot — a combination that places one foot firmly in the Portuguese indigenous tradition and the other in the international Bordeaux-influenced approach that Bairrada producers have been exploring for several decades.

Touriga Nacional is Portugal’s most celebrated native red grape — responsible for the backbone of Port and increasingly recognised as a world-class variety in its own right, bringing intense dark fruit, floral aromatics, and firm, grippy tannins. Here it provides structure and identity, while Merlot adds roundness and plum fruit, Syrah contributes spice and depth, Cabernet Sauvignon extends the frame and adds cassis and cedar, and Petit Verdot brings colour, grip, and a lifted violet note on the finish. The result is a wine of real complexity — more international in character than a pure Baga, but with an unmistakably Portuguese soul.