Grande Druida Branco Dão, Encruzado

A great white wine with an exquisite aroma that is heavily influenced by the flint. Add intense notes of orange blossom, dry herb, peach, grapefruit, lime, white pepper, pastry and wet stone - a bouquet of great purity and presence.
In the mouth, creaminess is paired with lively acidity and aromas of grapefruit, mild spices and flint, which intertwine very harmoniously.

The wine is creamy, persistent, engaging and austere at the same time, yet extremely complex, refined and elegant.
Very drinkable now, but can still mature for a few more years.

The Grande Druida Branco from the Dão is the wine symbol of the great friendship between two oenologists: Nuno Mira d'O and João Correâ, which unfortunately came to an abrupt end when João died much too early. Since then, Nuno had the idea of ​​one day making a very special wine and celebrating it as a kind of posthumous tribute to his friend João.
The wine is as special as the friendship between the two men: the Grande Druida is only produced in the best vintages and in very small quantities.
The first - vintage 2017 - is now available from us. With a contingent of only 60 bottles!

Like the “normal” Druida Branco, the Grande Druida is made from 100% Encruzado (the Burgundy killer…) from a special plot of old vines averaging 70 years old. The 2017 vintage brought a lot of structure, acidity and minerality.

The must was placed in barriques (228 liters, of which only 20% were new) with its own yeasts for spontaneous fermentation, in which the wine then remained for a further 10 months. A total of only 2,000 bottles were filled, which spent a further 16 months in the dark, cold cellar before being released on the market in spring 2020. Incidentally, the wine is already sold out in Portugal.

The story of Nuno is similar to the story of many young talented Portuguese oenologists with a vision and a dream. He belongs to the first generation in Portugal who have learned winemaking, the so-called oenology, and who see their country as a kind of playground. Salazar's dictatorship "frozen" the country for several decades, leading to national bankruptcy and eventual Troika control. But the Portuguese are fighters and freed themselves from this unsatisfactory situation on their own. When it comes to wine, the country has hardly specialized in the many internationally successful, mostly French grape varieties, but concentrates primarily on its own countless autochthonous grape varieties. In fact, Portugal has the largest selection of autochthonous grape varieties in the world. This is exactly what Nuno and his partner are interested in.

Together with João Corrêa he worked for several years as an oenologist for the Companhia das Quintas until one day he met João Soares from the Caves Messias. Together, the two decided to make a red wine from the Baga vine in Bairrada and that is how the project, or rather the Alías wine, was born. They then decided to make a white wine from the Encruzado vine in the Dão, the Druid. Both wines are so-called "Garage Wines", which are produced in very small quantities.

Manufacturer address: C2O Lda. Rua Professor Francisco Gentil, 16 - 4oE, 1600-236 Lisboa, Portugal