The Douro is not only schist

Everyone knows the Douro is schist. The terraces, the heat, the dark rock that stores the day’s sun and gives it back at night — it is the image of the region, and it is true. The great Douro reds are born of that rock and that struggle: schist does not feed a vine, it tests it. The roots go down metres in search of water, and the concentration comes from the search.

But the Douro is not only schist.

In places, the region is cut by veins of granite — a different rock, formed in a different way, surfacing mostly where the land climbs. Granite drains differently, holds heat differently, and the vine answers differently. Where schist gives power, granite gives tension.

Our Monte Cascas whites are born there. The Reserva Branco comes from a single vineyard of around thirty years, planted on white granite at 640 metres, 117 kilometres from the coast. It is the vineyard in these photographs — this is where we picked the Viosinho that leads the blend, crate by crate, in the morning, before the heat.

Altitude does the other half of the work. At 640 metres the nights are cold even in August, and the acidity the afternoon would burn away reaches the cellar intact. Granite and altitude, inside a region the whole world reads as schist and heat — that is why this white tastes nothing like the rest of the Douro.

On the palate, that is what you find: mineral, tense, floral. Viosinho brings the stone fruit and holds the acidity, Gouveio gives the body, and Códega do Larinho — always with the surname: in the Douro, «Códega» on its own is the local name for another variety — brings the aromas, markedly floral. Bâtonnage gives it the creamy texture that balances the tension of the stone.

The Douro built its reputation proving that schist makes great reds. Its veins of granite are quietly making another case: that the Douro can also make whites that owe no apologies to the region they come from.

Taste it in the Monte Cascas Reserva Branco.