Colossal Reserva, Lisboa Tinto

This is perhaps not quite as Colossal as it might promise, but I'll tell you what, it's very impressive!

A dense and concentrated nose with loads of overripe black and red fruit leading to spice, chocolate and more dense fruit. The palate is not over-powering but it is smooth, rich and full, with all those flavours promised on the nose delivered on cue.

If you like big, smooth, rich and juicy, ripe, dark red wines, then this is for you. If you don't then you'll definitively think that this wine is Colossal.

It achieves the balance that it possesses because the grapes are grown in Lisboa (the wine region around Lisbon) which is right beside the cooling Atlantic Ocean. It's another wine from the prolific and very successful Casa Santos Lima, who know a thing or two about the wines people like, and, perhaps more importantly, they know precisely how to make those wines.

Look at this...

This wine is aged in American and French oak berrels, like many other wines, but in this case absolutely everything about the winemaking is controlled. This isn't talking pejoratively it is just fact: the fermentation is temperature controlled (which is not very usual for red wines) so that they can have that intense, amazing perfume; the maceration (skin in contact with the juice) is done twice in order to extract as much colour, flavour and phenolics (that's the juicy smoothness) as they can; and after that it spends 8 months in the oak barrels to get all that toasty, chocolatey, sweetness into the bottle. And though they calk it Colossal, the moderate the alcohol so that it is only 14%, which is not that Colossal, considering that there are numerous other 'non-Colossal' red still wines in Portugal that are regularly up at 15% and more.

It's an impressively honest winemaking process...

If you like LAB and have a yearning for something bigger in all departments, then this is right up your alley! It might not be for everyone, but I know there'd be a home for it when I go on holidays...