Quinta Vale D. Maria Vinha do Rio Douro Red received 96 points from wine enthusiast Roger Voss of Wine Enthusiast, being the best wine scored in a set of 104 Portuguese wines.
Quinta Vale D. Maria Vinha do Rio is an incredibly deep coloured red wine. There are shades of deep violet, purple and dark red. This wine is made from a 100 year old vineyard that produces a concentrated wine, full of mature red fruit aromas, with a high complexity and elegance that only such a vineyard can create. There is a certain mature attitude with this wine that shows aromas of raspberries, plums and black cherries, combined with fresh notes of rock rose, none of these flavours are too obvious and too upfront, but appear with a discrete elegance as the wine slips down the palate and evolves in the glass.
Quinta Vale D. Maria is a very old property in the heart of the Douro Demarcated Region.
Property located at the mouth of the River Torto, its history dates back to 1868 and had associated with names like the Symington, that used their grapes to integrate in the vintage Smith Woodhouse.
When the Van Zeller family took this farm, it found it almost completely abandoned, with about 10 ha of old vineyard. The work of recovery would be arduous, but nothing that would remove Cristiano van Zeller from this arduous task, or he would not come from a superb "school", like Quinta do Noval, of which he was president.
Work was begun on the recovery of the vineyard and the houses that were almost reduced to dust. But what was in charge of Cristiano was to realize day after day, that there was a pearl that had so much to give. They were also acquiring adjacent plots, until this reached the 28ha of vineyard. The inaugural harvest was in 1996 and no longer stopped producing great wines.
In recent times, the wines of this farm, CV, Vale Dona Maria, and the recent Vinha do Rio and Vine Francisca have been among the best wines of Portugal for Wine Advocate, the most important and prestigious publication of wines worldwide .
In the Quinta do Vale Dona Maria are still produced the wines of the Van Zellers range, wines that come from grapes bought outside the Quinta, but due to their quality, deserve to bear the family name. In these, the professional treatment and rigor is exactly the same that is deposited in the wines that come from the fifth.
"Our efforts strive to be characterized by innovation and differentiation. We want our wines to reflect personality, character, enjoyment, fun, and are directed towards people and the pleasure of life." - Cristiano van Zeller
