Susana Esteban Search for Red 2019

The Wine Advocate
RP 93
Reviewed by: Luis Gutierrez

No wine was produced in 2018, so after the 2017, we jumped to the 2019 Procura Tinto red, a 50/50 blend of Alicante Bouschet and the classic blend of old vines from the Serra de São Mamede (Trincadeira Preta, Aragonez, Grand Noir, Alicante Bouschet, etc.), fermented and aged separately. The wine is well-ripened and has an alcohol content of 14.5%, higher due to the advanced ripeness of the Alicante Bouschet, harvested this way to avoid the herbaceous character of the grape, which the winemaker dislikes. It is a powerful and concentrated wine, with a medium to full-bodied palate and lots of tannins. It needs time and/or robust dishes. A total of 5,200 bottles were produced. It was bottled in December 2021.

Susana Esteban is a winemaker from Galicia who built her career in Portugal — she worked at Quinta do Côtto and Quinta do Crasto in the Douro, and later in Alentejo, where she works as a consultant for several wineries and has had her own project since 2011. She produces between 35,000 and 40,000 bottles a year. Each year, she collaborates with another winemaker or wine personality — a wine called Sidecar — the last two were made with Champagne producer Emmanuel Lassaigne and Galician distributor José Luis Aragunde, from Ribeira de Fefiñáns.

She works in the Portalegre area, a cooler and higher-altitude part of the Alentejo, where ripening is slower and the harvest occurs later than in the south of the region. She works with leased vineyards and buys grapes, but she has acquired a property in Alegrete, where she planted five hectares — 60% red and 40% white varieties — which will eventually complement her current portfolio.

I tasted the current releases, mainly from the 2021 and 2022 vintages, and some wines from previous vintages, such as 2017, to observe how the wines evolved. Both 2021 and 2022 had very hot summers, which blocked the ripening of the grapes. The effect of the vintage is milder in the mountainous area (Serra de São Mamede), where the nights are cooler than in Estremoz or southern Alentejo. In 2021, there was more rain in the winter; 2022 was drier. The style of the wines is quite similar, and Esteban believes this is due to the fact that he works with old vines planted with mixed varieties, which balance each other out in a higher altitude area.

White wines are destemmed and pressed in a vertical press; the must is decanted overnight and fermented, mostly in stainless steel, but also in clay and oak, always with indigenous yeasts, without malolactic fermentation, and is then aged on the fine lees for a relatively long period. The wines evolve slowly in the bottle.

The red wines are fermented, mostly destemmed — she doesn’t like herbaceous notes in reds — in stainless steel with indigenous yeasts, with malolactic fermentation usually also in stainless steel and aging, generally, in used and neutral oak, for one or two winters, depending on the wine. She uses many different containers — many of them previously used for Sidecar wines — to age the wines: foudres, large and small well-used and neutral barrels, amphorae (clay pots), stainless steel. Most of the wines come from specific vineyards, and her goal is to preserve the identity of each place.