Are the dry wines of the Douro the overall best ...

[Roy Hersh]

of any region in Portugal?

A decade ago, I found it difficult to select more than a couple of Douro reds that really excited me. Nowadays, it is clearly a region producing some fantastic wine, both red and white ... not to mention our favorite.

So the question remains, although we may be a biased lot, are the wines from the Douro (on average) the best of any region in Portugal in your opinion?

It should be very interesing to see how prices react to the fact that Mark Squires will now be reviewing Portuguese dry wines for the Wine Advocate. The positive is that it will truly help Portugal to become recognized around the world as a wine producing nation to be taken seriously.

[Jan-Tore Egge]

I don't really drink enough top-quality (and price!) wines to answer your question with confidence, but I'd say that in addition to Douro reds, the wines of Luís Pato are among my favourites from Portugal. And wines from Dão and Alentejo (when not too "sweet") can be quite good.

It will indeed be interesting to see what effect Squires will have on prices. At the moment, the Portuguese themselves seem perfectly capable of driving up the prices of their country's top wines.

[Frederick Blais]

Did not see the topic earlier but it is a very interesting one. I have tasted many wines of many region of Portugal. In my opinion, the Douro is making the best ones and have the greated potential to be the next "buzz" wine region if quantities of great wines can be produced.

Alentejo are able to make fine wine but too often they are too sweet or over extracted, especially when they use Syrah of Cab blends. Dao is not bad but I never had one that had potential to age more than a decade and give more pleasure than it does in its youth.

About Mark Squire, well, I never hear any good coments about him being a great taster. Then I don't think that him being part of Parker's team will be able to raise the prices of Portugal wine Production. He'll have to do a reputation first, neither Rovani nor Parker were to influence prices of Burgundy wines.