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“I'm thrilled that this historic wine is being revived …”
— Jancis Robinson MW, jancisrobinson.com
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“Viuva Gomes is the mythical name from Colares … I remember buying a case of red from the 1930s from the producer some 15 years ago, as demand was low.”
— Luis Guttierez, Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate (Jan, 2026)
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“The label is from the 1920s, glued by hand, and the lady who sticks them on also makes the glue.”
— Julia Harding MW, jancisrobinson.com
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Adega Viuva Gomes
Colares, Portugal
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“Colares, in the past spelled as Collares, is one of the smallest appellations on earth. There are only 20 hectares of vineyards, but five years ago, there were only 11, which means there are new plantings there. It’s a coastal region, and the vines are planted on beach sand, very close to Sintra, in a place where the price of the land and the pressure from real estate caused the size of the vineyards to shrink to almost zero.
The requirements to make wine from the appellation are very restrictive, as it has to be ungrafted vines on sandy soils. Land is scarce and expensive, and the wines didn’t sell. They are produced with the red variety Ramisco, which is quite tannic and high in acidity, and the wines from the past, produced in a rustic way, low in alcohol and sharp, required decades in bottle to be drinkable.
They [Viuva Gomes] are the mythical name from there, but for some reason I had never visited them. But more incredible is that we have never published a tasting note or a line about them. I finally had the chance to visit their vineyards and historical winery and taste their current releases. They were created back in 1808, and Diogo Baeta is the fifth generation of the family now in charge of winemaking, with close collaboration from his father. They have five hectares of organically farmed vineyards and purchase grapes from a further two. The vines range from centenary to planted in 2024. They only produce 15,000 bottles in total, not all Colares, but hope to grow to 25,000 in the medium term. They were never big, but in the past, they produced up to 50,000 bottles.
They have kept the winery exactly like it was in the past, so visiting them is akin to time travelling. It’s a beautiful and atmospheric place, reflecting the family’s love for tradition, history and the region. There was a tradition to age the wines from Colares in chestnut and mahogany (!!) casks, and the family’s old casks are over 100 years old.
The casks certainly play a role in the profile of the wines, as I could clearly see when tasting wines aged in French oak barrels and in the old chestnut and mahogany wood casks. The wines in French oak are stunning and surprisingly elegant, and they’re approachable when they are released, which is very different from the rustic and characterful profile that made the wines from the past unique.
Mahogany, was the prestige wood of the 18th and early 19th centuries, used for furniture and musical instruments, but nowadays, it’s a protected wood. It was possibly brought from Brazil and also played a role in other regions, like Setubal and the Douro/Porto, where it was generically referred to as “exotic woods.” They surely gave some exotic character to many of the wines. It wasn’t used as staves, but rather as casks heads. The casks are magnificent, showing the durability and the bright, polished colors in the casks. At Viuva Gomes, they have reused that wood to build smaller vats, as the very small volumes of today couldn’t fill the larger casks of yesteryear.”
— Luis Guttierez, Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate
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~ please note : these wines are exceedingly rare and limited in quantity. ~
A L L O R D E R S B Y R E P L Y E M A I L
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The White
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Viuva Gomes 2023 Colares Branco (500ml)
$155.00
“The 2023 Colares Branco was produced with Malvasía de Colares from ungrafted vines on sandy soils from different plots ranging from six to 130 years of age, usually close to the sea. The full clusters were pressed, and the juice fermented in stainless steel and barrel with indigenous yeasts, then the wine matured in 225-liter French oak barrels. The barrels seem to have changed the character of the wine a little bit, marking it a little and detracting from its personality. It comes in at 12% alcohol, with a pH of 3.5 and six grams of acidity and a dry finish. This is serious and austere but more open than the white Viticultores from this same year. It opens up nicely and slowly in the glass, with herbal aromas and a stony character. It has a balanced palate with a mixture of salty and bitter notes in the finish. 1,850 half-liter bottles produced. It was bottled in March 2025.
I had tasted a bottle of the 1969 the week before my visit, and I wonder if these whites will age the same way and for such a long time as the old vintages.”
92+pts — Luis Guttierez, Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate
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“Sour-fresh aroma of citrus and quince with a touch of oak spice. More of an impression of oak on the palate. Light-bodied, piercing and bone dry. Subtle, crisp and long; without having concentration it has intensity. Piercing herbal finish and lightly salty. The label is from the 1920s, glued by hand, and the lady who sticks them on also makes the glue. Traditional bottle size was 65-cl but their 37.5-cl bottles are a similar shape.”
17/20pts — Jancis Robinson MW, jancisrobinson.com
The Red
II
Viuva Gomes 2019 Colares (500ml)
Shelf Price: $155.00
“The 2019 Collares from Viuva Gomes is a frail, fully transparent garnet to the eye tending ruby at the core with faint tawny and brick-dust tints towards the rim. Coiled and reticent, it is initially delicately fragrant, unspooling saline trimmed aromas of underripe strawberry, hung game, and iodine. Complexifying nuances of antique furniture (the Mahogany barrels!), crushed rock and white sand, and leather cure form a veil behind which latently powerful notions of cocoa, plums and dried roses bide their time. There is also a spellbinding and disarmingly precise analogue to aged, raw Pu Er tea present, earthen and elusive. Further aeration reveals subtle oxidative hints and faint citrus fragrances, especially dried mandarin peel. The palate is similarly tightly bound, with great skeins of acidity driving the presently high-toned flavours across the tongue; firm, severe tannins act as channel, fine but highly compressed. Time will be most kind here but presently orange peel and tangerine
citrus abound, along with dried pale-red fruits. As in the aromatic profile, behind these lurk deeper pitched notions of dark fruits and bitter chocolate. The finish is very long and savoury, with highly stimulating inflections of mineral salts and ferruginous ore, bay laurel, and sweet strawberry. Most unusual, unique even. Excellent.”
— David
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“The 2019 Colares Tinto was produced with Ramisco grapes from ungrafted vines grown on sandy soils mostly close to the sea, from different plots, from centenary to very young. The whole clusters were foot trodden and fermented with indigenous yeasts in stainless steel, and the wine matured in a mixture of French barriques, 500-liter chestnut and mahogany (!) barrels and stainless steel. It has a characterful and nuanced nose, very perfumed and attractive, herbal, characterful, with notes of exotic woods (you bet!). It's surprisingly elegant and approachable. It has contained ripeness and alcohol, 11.5%, with a pH of 3.65 and 5.7 grams of acidity. 2019 was a very good year, warm but not as warm as 2015 or 2017. The wine is superb. 1,600 half-liter bottles were filled in March 2025.”
96pts — Luis Guttierez, Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate
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“Light bricky red. Seductively joyful red fruits. Sweet and sour with a hint of citrus. Light-bodied yet intense and pure. Youthful energy and vibrant freshness and just slightly salty on the finish. Finely dry texture, so fresh. Fragrant and long with excellent balance.”
17.5/20pts — Julia Harding MW, jancisrobinson.com
The Antique Bottles
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Viuva Gomes 1969 Colares (650ml)
enquire
“We tasted a bottle of the 1969 that was incredibly young, with rustic notes of wild berries and an earthy touch, hints of eucalyptus and salty, with iron and tannin.”
— Luis Guttierez, Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate
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“So refined and elegant with taut redcurrant and cherry fruit, some spices and also some earthy hints. For its age, this is very pure with elegance and still-firm tannins, as well as keen acidity. Lively grip. So fine.”
96pts — Jamie Goode, wineanorak.com
IV
Viuva Gomes 1967 Colares (650ml)
enquire
“Savoury and intense with some malty, spicy notes and some leather. Spicy and grippy, showing nice freshness, and still has lots of cherry and raspberry fruit. Really complex and taut. Fine, spicy and precise with earth and compost hints. Amazing.”
94pts — Jamie Goode, wineanorak.com
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Brightly Coloured Palaces
“Romantic palaces crest the verdant hills of Sintra, relics now in the Republican Era of the Royal past when wealth plundered from a New World empire flowed back to Portugal. Brightly coloured, they seem fanciful and dreamlike. Their cruel origins cannot escape the observer, who is first ensnared by their gaiety, as if even the colonial oppressors needed a fantastical land to escape their own iniquity, so great were their crimes wrought on a whole continent.
The Royal Family, long having summered in this riviera, were surrounded by a court of nobles. This court nobility attracted further toadies and soon Sintra became a fashionable resort town. The palaces were erected and the bourgeoisie arrived.
The beaches of Sintra are coated in a fine white sand, harshly dazzling in its purity while remaining soft underfoot owing to the inexorable erosion of the ocean. The base matter from which it is composited comes largely from the Quarternary Limestone plateau which has been heavily weathered. Beneath, there is a massif formation of magmatic origin, riven with ferrous ores.
Romisco, a local grape, has long been grown in sands close to the beach. Perhaps given the noble settling of the limited pastoral land between the limestone formations and forested hills further inland the then less genteel pursuit of viticulture was limited to the narrow strips of land immediately proximal to the coast.
With the arrival of the bourgeoisie Sintra grew rapidly. White washed, traditional houses sit in the shadows of the colourful palaces built into the slopes of hills. The Dictatorship of the 20th Century saw further expansion of this municipality as supporters of the Salazar Regime sought to legitimise their positions by emulating the courtiers of old, erecting their own residences in Sintra. Today, still, it remains along with the Algarve Coast the preeminent resort in Portugal and perhaps the whole of Iberia.
There is not much land between the mountains of Sintra and the coast, with its cliffs and beaches. On the eastern side of the mountains lies flat, poorly soiled land before the suburbs of Lisboa, though as it lacks the fresh sea breezes that cool the western side, it is socially desirable. As Sintra grew, the land available for viticulture correspondingly shrunk. The Colares DOC, a wine region, became a relic itself. It was relegated to a miniscule 11 ha. This figure is dwarfed by most estates in Bordeaux and Domaines in Burgundy.
During the Salazar Dictatorship wineries were transformed. Bottlings were controlled and grapes submitted to local regional cooperatives. In regions such as Colares grapes were sent in trucks to the local cooperative where they were fermented and elevaged, then bottled and sold. For a producer of tradition and antiquity, qualitatively minded, such as Viuva Gomes, this was unacceptable. They submitted some wine but their wines of great quality remained cellared at the property. Naturally, for a long time, collectors who knew and appreciated these wines had access to bottles from vintages long past.
To this day Viuva Gomes retains substantial museum stocks which, like the limited land of Sintra, are now receiving attention from a new generation of demand, consumers legitimising their tastes by accessing a link to the past.”
— David
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Please join us for a drink soon. Reservations preferred.
Bookings and after-6.00pm access: (03) 9419 3867
Tue. 11.00 am–6.00 pm
Wed.–Sat. 11.00 am–11.00 pm
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If you would like any of the above, would like to come by for a private appointment, or just have some questions — please let us know.