Alenquer is a Portuguese wine DOC in the region once known as Estremadura, but which has now been renamed to Lisboa. Alenquer is arguably the most successful of the DOCs in this area, particularly during the ongoing renaissance of Portuguese wine exports. Classic Portuguese varieties like Aragonez, Touriga Nacional and Touriga Franca, are found here, making some of Lisboa's most quality-driven red wines.
©Quinta do Pinto
The Lisboa region is long and thin, and runs northwest alongside Portugal's Atlantic coast. Alenquer lies further inland than the other Lisboa DOCs, and centers around the town of the same name, 25 miles (40km) from the coast and roughly the same distance north of downtown Lisbon. Thanks to its sheltered, inland position, coastal winds are less of a feature in the Alenquer terroir than for its neighbors closer to the Atlantic. The local hills (the Serra de Montejunto) mirror the coastline, and run almost unbroken from Lisbon to Coimbra. They diffuse the wind, leaving numerous pockets of relative calm and creating subtle mesoclimatic variations.
A growing number of Lisboa's top wine estates sit within the boundaries of the Alenquer viticultural area. They enjoy a drier, more consistent growing season, and benefit particularly in autumn when the coastal vineyards are often battered by high winds and dampened by rot-inducing rains. While unprotected vines in Lourinhã and Colares endure September squalls, their Alenquer counterparts are left to enjoy calmer, brighter conditions to finish their ripening processes.
Red wines have shown more class than whites here, as they have in Arruda, the DOC area immediately to the south. The varieties used are a mixture of traditional and modern, rustic and fashionable. The usual suspects – Aragonez, Touriga Nacional and Touriga Franca, Tinta Miuda (aka Graciano) and Trincadeira – are found here, alongside their white stablemates Fernao Pires and Arinto. Since 2002, a wave of French varieties have joined these local stalwarts, among them the likes of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Syrah. The most widely used among the white-wine migrants are Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc.
Beyond Arruda, between the Tagus river and the Montejunto hills, lies Bucelas. This is a tiny region whose high-quality, crisp, dry white wines (based on Arinto) are an excellent complement to Alenquer's complex reds and the rustic Ramisco-based reds of Carcavelos.
