Dominó ‘Colar’ Tinto 2020

$23.00

Location: Portugal

Winemaker: Vitor & Rita Claro

Grapes: Castelão, Caladoc, Aragone

Soil: Clay, limestone

Winemaking: The grapes are pressed manually. Alcoholic and malolactic fermentationtake place on the lees in stainless steel. 50% of the wine is aged in old barrels, the other 50% in stainless steel. 25mg/kg of S02 is usually added to the grapes at press. In the spring, 25mg is added to the wine one month before bottling. Total SO2 is under 30mg/L. 

This wine comes from purchased fruit from the famous region of Colares, though not from its infamous bush-trained vines. The vineyard is at 100m altitude. It's mostly Castelão with some Caladoc and Aragonez. The word Colar translates to "necklace" but is also a clever hint of where the wine is from.

From the Importer Louis/Dressner: Vitor Claro started Dominó in 2010 as a tiny side project while working as a chef. What began as a personal challenge to produce against the trend of high alcohol, high extraction wines has evolved into a full time, multi-region pursuit.

Vitor fell in love with wine over shared bottles with friends and patrons at the numerous places he'd worked over the years. In 2008, he found himself head-chef of an extremely successful hotel/restaurant/winery in Portalegre, a part of the much broader Alentejo region. His time there led to harvesting two years in a row, befriending the head winemaker and taking his own interest in the transformation of grapes into wine. Inspired by the low intervention wines he'd fallen in love with over the years, he wondered if they could do such a thing locally.

"Let’s just crush some grapes and make a simple wine".

He searched, found and fell in love with a small parcel of old vines in Portalegre,producing two barrels of white and two barrels of red in 2010. This was essentially the entirety of the Dominó project until 2015, when he started working the same vineyard part-time with his wife Rita. It was also around this time, through a chef consultancy in the Beira Interior, that Vitor began producing a wine there ("Colmeal"). An additional attempt with dryMuscat from Setúbal was never released.

All the wines were being made and stored in their respective regions while Vitor was running his own restaurant in Lisbon, the eponymous Claro. After deciding a warehouse was necessary, Vitor and Rita found one 30 minutes out of the city... with an abandoned 1.5 hectares of vines behind it! Naturally, they rented the warehouse and started farming the vines.

With wine becoming an ever consuming endeavor for the couple (Rita was working full time as an architect), dissatisfaction with the restaurant life and a very promising 2016 vintage, the couple decided to change lives and make Dominó a full time project. In 2017, they expanded by acquiring a beautiful parcel in Carcavelos through a friend. They also started buying and picking grapes from the famous coastal region of Colares in 2018. Rita and Vitor still live in Lisbon but plan is to have 100% of the production vinified in the house attached to the Portalegre vineyards by the 2020 vintage.

The breakdown of production is as follows: 

2.5 hectares are farmed in Portalegre and produce the "Foxtrot", "Salão Frio" and "Monte Pratas" bottlings. The idea is that down the line these wines will be a blend of estate and purchased fruit from the area. "Vide", Dominó's top wine, is exclusively estate fruit. As the Claro gain more experience with their land, more estatebottlings of this type will follow. 

Two hectares are farmed in Carcavelos. The very limited "Samarra" comes from here and a traditional fortified wine is being worked on for future release. The "Colar" red and white come from Colares and will always be from purchased fruit from a friend who farms the vines organically.Other parcels are currently farmed and grapes purchased, but these are in flux and may very well change in the near future. 


Location: Portugal

Winemaker: Vitor & Rita Claro

Grapes: Castelão, Caladoc, Aragone

Soil: Clay, limestone

Winemaking: The grapes are pressed manually. Alcoholic and malolactic fermentationtake place on the lees in stainless steel. 50% of the wine is aged in old barrels, the other 50% in stainless steel. 25mg/kg of S02 is usually added to the grapes at press. In the spring, 25mg is added to the wine one month before bottling. Total SO2 is under 30mg/L. 

This wine comes from purchased fruit from the famous region of Colares, though not from its infamous bush-trained vines. The vineyard is at 100m altitude. It's mostly Castelão with some Caladoc and Aragonez. The word Colar translates to "necklace" but is also a clever hint of where the wine is from.

From the Importer Louis/Dressner: Vitor Claro started Dominó in 2010 as a tiny side project while working as a chef. What began as a personal challenge to produce against the trend of high alcohol, high extraction wines has evolved into a full time, multi-region pursuit.

Vitor fell in love with wine over shared bottles with friends and patrons at the numerous places he'd worked over the years. In 2008, he found himself head-chef of an extremely successful hotel/restaurant/winery in Portalegre, a part of the much broader Alentejo region. His time there led to harvesting two years in a row, befriending the head winemaker and taking his own interest in the transformation of grapes into wine. Inspired by the low intervention wines he'd fallen in love with over the years, he wondered if they could do such a thing locally.

"Let’s just crush some grapes and make a simple wine".

He searched, found and fell in love with a small parcel of old vines in Portalegre,producing two barrels of white and two barrels of red in 2010. This was essentially the entirety of the Dominó project until 2015, when he started working the same vineyard part-time with his wife Rita. It was also around this time, through a chef consultancy in the Beira Interior, that Vitor began producing a wine there ("Colmeal"). An additional attempt with dryMuscat from Setúbal was never released.

All the wines were being made and stored in their respective regions while Vitor was running his own restaurant in Lisbon, the eponymous Claro. After deciding a warehouse was necessary, Vitor and Rita found one 30 minutes out of the city... with an abandoned 1.5 hectares of vines behind it! Naturally, they rented the warehouse and started farming the vines.

With wine becoming an ever consuming endeavor for the couple (Rita was working full time as an architect), dissatisfaction with the restaurant life and a very promising 2016 vintage, the couple decided to change lives and make Dominó a full time project. In 2017, they expanded by acquiring a beautiful parcel in Carcavelos through a friend. They also started buying and picking grapes from the famous coastal region of Colares in 2018. Rita and Vitor still live in Lisbon but plan is to have 100% of the production vinified in the house attached to the Portalegre vineyards by the 2020 vintage.

The breakdown of production is as follows: 

2.5 hectares are farmed in Portalegre and produce the "Foxtrot", "Salão Frio" and "Monte Pratas" bottlings. The idea is that down the line these wines will be a blend of estate and purchased fruit from the area. "Vide", Dominó's top wine, is exclusively estate fruit. As the Claro gain more experience with their land, more estatebottlings of this type will follow. 

Two hectares are farmed in Carcavelos. The very limited "Samarra" comes from here and a traditional fortified wine is being worked on for future release. The "Colar" red and white come from Colares and will always be from purchased fruit from a friend who farms the vines organically.Other parcels are currently farmed and grapes purchased, but these are in flux and may very well change in the near future.