Touriga wine

[Malkavian]

Last week I had the pleasure of visiting the Silver Coast winery of Ocean Isle beach, North Carolina for a tasting and generally just to poke around (late father's day shopping, let's call it)

They charge a modest fee (5$ I believe) for a flight of wines to taste. I recall a cab, a merlot and a sweet dessert wine that were all reasonably good (sadly I didn't make detailed tasting notes) but the one that stuck out was a Touriga they called Cape Fear Blood wine (apt, given the color I thought) it frankly didn't appeal to me that much, it was fruity and extremely tangy, almost harsh, but I don't know how much of that was due to the who-knows-how-long-open sample bottle or other factors...I'd be willing to get another bottle juts to see how it strikes me again.

The gentleman at the counter talked grapes with me for a bit, and mentioned Touriga was a major player in port wines, which I'm a fan of, but I'd never encountered it before as a single varietal--is it one that commonly makes good wines or does it primarily shine in the likes of port?

[melkor]

Look for red wines from the Dão region of Portugal, they're made with the Touriga grape. I think Touriga is called Touriga Nacional when it's used for port, but I'm not sure - that may be a different grape.