Julio B. Bastos Alicante Bouschet 2020

Júlio B. Bastos Alicante Bouschet 2020 is a top red made by renowned producer Júlio Bastos (known for the Dona Maria wines) in Estremoz, Alentejo. It's a tribute to the producer's father, made from a strict selection of old-vine Alicante Bouschet grapes.

The Wine Advocate
RP 95

Reviewed by: Luis Gutiérrez

The 2020 Júlio B. Bastos Alicante Bouschet, a varietal red, has a paler colour but still shows plenty of graphite and charcoal notes, being spicy, smoky and slightly earthy. This wine is a tribute to Júlio's father, whose ancestors planted the first Alicante Bouschet in the Alentejo. These vines, planted more than 70 years ago on limestone and clay soils, gave this wine.

The grapes were foot-trodden in marble lagares and the wine aged for 15 months in new French oak barrels. However, the wine is so powerful that it has integrated the oak very well. It's a serious wine, with a powerful but very balanced, harmonious palate of enormous dimension. It has 14.5% alcohol, a pH of 3.65 and 5.67 g/L acidity. 5,000 bottles were produced. It was bottled in January 2025. A wine made for long development in bottle. Time should benefit its expression and complexity.

Dona Maria is the project of Júlio Bastos, who ran an old property called Quinta do Carmo between 1986 and 2000, which from 1992 was part of a joint venture with the Rothschild group. Bastos started the Dona Maria project in 2003 and is the fourth generation of the family to make wine on this property.

Today he has 72 hectares of vines around Estremoz, in the northern Alentejo, including five hectares of vines over 70 years old, with Alicante Bouschet of the same clone as the first vineyard of this grape planted in Portugal, and five hectares planted in 2017.

The winery is made up of three old 19th-century buildings restored in 2003. One has 19th-century marble lagares where the grapes are foot-trodden. There are 18 cement tanks where the reds age. The newest building has fermentation tanks for whites, reds and rosés, as well as a bottling and labelling line.

Average production is half a million bottles. The style is neo-classical Alentejo, combining French and Portuguese grapes.

Published: 11 June 2026