Baga

[BAH-guh] Portugal's most widely cultivated red wine grape variety. It's particularly heavily planted in bairrada where it accounts for 80 to 90 percent of the region's red wine production. Baga is also widely grown in the regions of dão, douro (where its known as Tinta Bairrada), and Minho. Although extremely productive, Baga generally produces only medium-quality wines. These deeply colored wines are very tannic and astringent especially when vinified in the traditional way by leaving the skins and stalks in the fermenting juice for a week or longer. Newer processing methods, which use only the skins (and for shorter periods) during fermentation, produce rich, colorful wines that are fragrant and fruity and certainly not as rough.