Alentejo

We recently tasted a couple of fine red dinner wines from Alentejo, Portugal, the largest of thirty-one DOCs in that country.  Portuguese wine law delineates three quality levels starting with Vinho Regional (VR) which is table wine with a regional identification.  One step higher would be IPR which doesn't easily translate into English but in practical usage, IPR wines seem to be on a track to become DOCs.  As the top quality level, DOCs are acclaimed wines that come from the thirty-one finest Portuguese wine regions.  

(Wine industry legalese is confounding in the same way legalese is always confounding in any usage; like, WTF!, Do we have to define everything ad nauseum and then apply that usage chapter and verse to a standard that the rank and file will never appreciate?  Well, yes, I guess we do, in order to ensure that those valued top shelf wines don't get bastardized by wine industry opportunists.)

Alentejo is the largest DOC of Portugal, owning a huge swath across the southern third of the country.  Eight subregions have been delineated in Alentejo and when a subregion's name is hyphenated on the label with Alentejo, each of them may have the DOC classification.  If a wine is just labeled Alentejo it may conceivably be an IPR or even relegated to VR status.  Confusing enough for you?

So why are we dwelling on Portuguese wine law when the post could actually go into what the great wines of the region are?  Fell into a rabbit hole, I guess.  Anyway, the reds are formidable hefty types while the whites are light and crisp and all are exceptional dinner wines (like all Europeans are.)  But there's trouble on the horizon in the form of climate change.  Alentejo is already hot and dry and if it keeps getting hotter all bets are off for not only the wine industry but also for Alentejo's other premier industry, cork.