Winemaker Notes
This Vintage Port has a powerful, floral nose with hints of tar and green tobacco. On the palate, there is fresh blackberry and red plum, finishing with licorice and mineral elements.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This is really impressive with fantastic aromas of ripe fruit and hints of earth. Some moss. Full-bodied and very sweet, yet the power and tannins are all here. A juicy and sweet wine that impresses. Drink in 2022.
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Wine Spectator
This is packed with racy plum, açai and blueberry reduction notes, all seamlessly layered with licorice snap and plum cake flavors. Shows a lovely graphite hint through the finish. Best from 2030 through 2050.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2016 Vintage Port is mostly Touriga Nacional from old vines, plus 22% Sousão, coming in with 114 grams of residual sugar. As with the other Symington properties this issue, this was bottled in May 2018 for release in October 2018. This shows the same good fruit as the Warre's, but in a much drier and sterner fashion, at least perceptibly and at least at the moment. It does have a fairly high sugar level on paper (normal-high, not over the top). As it sat and aired, it became more powerful, not less, showing plenty of intensity. Tight, tannic and a little astringent, this lacks expressive fruit as yet, but its laser-like precision will serve it in good stead. I loved that firm feel. It needs at least a decade to come around, though. It has a lot of upside potential, but it's linear and compact just now. Let's start here and see where we go when it opens up a bit more.
Rating: 93+ -
Wine Enthusiast
This finely perfumed wine has ripe tannins and rich fruit. It is full of berry flavors, supported by a dry structure and acidity, all well packaged into a complex texture that will allow the wine to age. Drink from 2028.
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Decanter
The blend includes grapes from a 30-year-old Touriga Nacional vineyard as well as Sousão from the upper part of the estate, picked early. This isn't giving much away on the nose, but it is soft and sweet on the palate, showing nicely defined summer fruit with a touch of dark chocolate concentration and refined, peppery tannins. A midweight wine to drink over the medium term.
Port is a sweet, fortified wine with numerous styles: Ruby, Tawny, Vintage, Late Bottled Vintage (LBV), White, Colheita, and a few unusual others. It is blended from from the most important red grapes of the Douro Valley, based primarily on Touriga Nacional with over 80 other varieties approved for use. Most Ports are best served slightly chilled at around 55-65°F. To learn more, see our full Port Wine Guide
The home of Port—perhaps the most internationally acclaimed beverage—the Douro region of Portugal is one of the world’s oldest delimited wine regions, established in 1756. The vineyards of the Douro, set on the slopes surrounding the Douro River (known as the Duero in Spain), are incredibly steep, necessitating the use of terracing and thus, manual vineyard management as well as harvesting. The Douro's best sites, rare outcroppings of Cambrian schist, are reserved for vineyards that yield high quality Port.
While more than 100 indigenous varieties are approved for wine production in the Douro, there are five primary grapes that make up most Port and the region's excellent, though less known, red table wines. Touriga Nacional is the finest of these, prized for its deep color, tannins and floral aromatics. Tinta Roriz (Spain's Tempranillo) adds bright acidity and red fruit flavors. Touriga Franca shows great persistence of fruit and Tinta Barroca helps round out the blend with its supple texture. Tinta Cão, a fine but low-yielding variety, is now rarely planted but still highly valued for its ability to produce excellent, complex wines.
White wines, generally crisp, mineral-driven blends of Arinto, Viosinho, Gouveio, Malvasia Fina and an assortment of other rare but local varieties, are produced in small quantities but worth noting.
With hot summers and cool, wet winters, the Duoro has a maritime climate.