Luis Seabra Indie Xisto Douro Tinto 2016

Luis Seabra Vinhos is a small, highly respected Portuguese project founded by Luis Seabra that focuses on terroir-driven, minimal‑intervention wines from old vineyards in regions such as Douro, Dão and Vinho Verde. Born in Angola to a family of coffee farmers, Seabra returned to Portugal in the 1970s and trained in viticulture and enology (studies at UTAD and a Master’s in winemaking), later working as an enology instructor and soil researcher before moving into professional winemaking in the Douro region.

After a decade as winemaker at Niepoort, where he was responsible for some of the best known and highly rated wines to come out of the famed Douro and Porto producer, Luis Seabra decided that he no longer wanted to make wines to someone else’s tastes and specifications. Thus, he began his eponymous winery, and set about shattering preconceptions of what Douro wines represent.

The Indie Xisto is one of a series of wines that Luis makes that exemplify and express the intensely terroir-driven style in which he operates. He is a particularly gifted winemaker, one who sees wine as a medium through which a piece of land can speak. This series of wines is one in which he removes every variable but that of the land itself, and the stark expression of the soil that results is extraordinary. He works exclusively with spontaneous fermentation, native yeasts, and large format tight-grained oak for all the wines in this series. Sustainably farmed single vineyard planted since 1950. Tended in blue schist soil at 510 (1,673 ft) elevation.

Wineanorak

Luis Seabra Indie Xisto Douro Tinto 2016- 93 / 100 Points

After a successful decade as winemaker and right hand to Dirk at Niepoort, Luis Seabra decided to break out on his own in 2012, answering a calling to leave his own name on the wines of Douro. Rather than a single vineyard, the Xisto series is based on a single soil; in this case, Schist (Xisto). However, Indie refers to the single vineyard independence of this medium-bodied red, sourced from one site in Alijo, in the northern Douro. The 2016 blends Tinta Roriz, Touriga Franca, Tinta Amarela, Tinta Barroca, Rufete, Touriga Brasileira, Donzelinho Tinto, Malvasia Preta and Touriga Femea, from a sustainably farmed, blue schist soiled vineyard planted since 1950 and at 510m elevation. Native fermented, this spent 22 months in French oak barrels and saw very low sulphur additions throughout. This is a serious, structural, sharply savoury red, with crushed leaves, stones, and thorns, clad in darker shades of blue and purple fruit, and scented with alluring wild plum. Grippy with firm tannins laced with white and black peppercorns, this lingers with mineral salts through the tight finish. So youthful, this has decade+ to go. Seabra prefers the even vintages in the Douro, citing ’14, ’16, and ’18 the best of the past decade. That said, I tasted the Xisto Indie 2017 last month in France, and thought it excelente.

– Jamie Goode