Portugal has more than two hundred grape varieties of its own. The Instituto da Vinha e do Vinho puts the figure at around 250, and an AICEP study ranks the country third in the world for grape diversity. These three are enough to make sense of the rest.
Around 250
The number is not settled. Antero Martins, professor at the Instituto Superior de Agronomia and coordinator of the Portuguese Association for Vine Diversity, told the IVV that "there are several dozen varieties not yet recorded".
Most stay where they were planted and never reach a label. Three left the village: Baga, Touriga Nacional and Aragonez.
Baga
Baga covers 8,258 hectares in Portugal, 4 per cent of the national vineyard. Around 3,500 of those hectares are in Bairrada.
The berry is small and thick-skinned, and the tannin comes from the skin. Natural acidity runs between 6 and 7 grams per litre. It ripens late, two weeks after Castelão, and rots easily in a region where it rains in September.
Hence the reputation. A bad year gives a hard, astringent wine. A good year gives one that holds for twenty years and picks up cedar, herbs and dried fruit.
Bairrada in five dates
1766: the Marquis of Pombal orders vines pulled up around Anadia and Mogofores to make room for grain.
1867: António Augusto de Aguiar draws the map of the Paiz Vinhateiro da Bairrada, with three sub-regions.
1890: at the Escola Prática de Viticultura e Pomologia da Bairrada, in Anadia, José Tavares da Silva runs the first sparkling wine trials in Portugal.
1979: Portaria no. 709-A/79, of 28 December, creates the Bairrada demarcated region, with boundaries almost identical to Aguiar's, 112 years earlier. It requires a minimum of 50 per cent Baga in the reds.
2003: the Clássico designation appears, also at a minimum of 50 per cent Baga.
Luís Pato and Filipa Pato
Luís Pato made his first wine in 1980. In 1985 he began destemming and ageing in French oak, where neither was done.
In 1999 he left the appellation and bottled as Vinho Regional Beiras instead. He carried on making Baga, without the rule that had obliged him to.
Filipa Pato, his daughter, works with her husband William Wouters and has warned that the variety is being abandoned in the region at a fast rate.
In 2012 the two joined other producers and set up Baga Friends, eight today: with them, Quinta das Bágeiras, Quinta da Vacariça, Quinta de Baixo/Niepoort, Sidónio de Sousa, Vadio and Giz.
Touriga Nacional
Dão and Douro both claim the grape as theirs, and Wines of Portugal does not pick a side. The old reference cited by the Vine to Wine Circle catalogue is Lobo's classification of 1790, which places the variety in the Douro and the Beiras.
There are 13,032 hectares in Portugal, 7 per cent of the national vineyard, making it the third most planted in the country. In the Douro it is fourth, with 3,993 hectares.
Thick skin, loaded with colour and tannin. Small bunches, and yields that are never high.
In 1981 João Nicolau de Almeida and his uncle José Ramos Pinto Rosas presented a study of Douro varieties and picked five reds as the most suitable for Port: Touriga Nacional, Touriga Francesa, Tinta Roriz, Tinta Barroca and Tinto Cão. The region followed the list.
Aragonez, or Tinta Roriz
One grape, two Portuguese names. Tinta Roriz in the Douro and the Dão, Aragonez in the Alentejo and south.
Spain calls it Tempranillo, from temprano, early, after its early ripening.
In 2012 Javier Ibáñez and a Spanish team published the variety's parentage in the American Journal of Enology and Viticulture: Albillo Mayor and Benedicto, both Spanish.
There are 20,884 hectares in Portugal, 11 per cent of the national vineyard. It is the most planted variety in the country. In the Douro it covers 6,496 hectares and ranks second.
It almost always goes into a blend. With Touriga Nacional and Touriga Franca in the Douro, with Trincadeira and Alicante Bouschet in the Alentejo.
Why the name changes
Varieties were named by whoever planted them, before ampelography and long before DNA. One valley had no idea what the next called the same plant.
Baga has more than twenty recorded synonyms, among them Poeirinho, Tinta da Bairrada, Carrega Burros and Paga Dívidas.
In 2000 Touriga Francesa officially became Touriga Franca, on the grounds that the variety has no connection to France at all.
Castelão turns up in conversation as Periquita, after Cova da Periquita, the Azeitão property José Maria da Fonseca bought in 1846. Periquita has been a trademark since 1941.
Across the Minho, Alvarinho is Albariño.
At the table
Baga wants fat. Suckling pig, kid, duck. The acidity and the tannin do work there that a soft red does not.
Touriga Nacional on its own brings colour, flowers and structure, and stands up to game and aged cheese. Aragonez is the mildest of the three and the one you notice least in a blend.
Fado ao Carmo has two fado houses in Lisbon, in Chiado and in Alfama, with different wine lists, all of them Portuguese wines. Between the two lists there are 35 wines made from these grapes, and the list is here. Tables can be booked here.