Winemaker Notes
Dow's 30 Years Old Tawny is made exclusively from grapes sourced at "A"classified vineyards (the highest), which includes Dow's Quinta do Bomfim and Quintada Senhora da Ribeira, two of the very best vineyards in the Douro valley. This enviable position is reflected in the excellent quality and consistency of the style evident in Dow's 30Years Old Tawny.
This 30 Years Old Port is a beautifully mature wine of great distinction. Pale and delicate, it has superb complexity and style. With a concentrated and nutty nose and a full, fresh and lingering finish. It is a very skillful blend, creating an excellent balance between nutty oak and raisin fruit flavors.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The NV 30 Years Tawny Port was bottled in 2013 with a bar-top cork and 120 grams per liter of residual sugar. This muscular Tawny is dry, concentrated and stern at times. Although on paper it doesn't have much less sugar than the Graham's this issue, the balance is different. It starts slow, then shows some notable bite on the finish. Gracefully constructed and sensually textured, it's never too thick or overpowering, but it always seems dense and intense anyway. Its complexity and focus are impressive. Then, it finishes rather dry. This was certainly one of the stars here. As always, these last indefinitely, barring cork failures. They are not really meant to be held, though.
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Wine Spectator
Fresh and focused, with a mix of peach cobbler, dried white nectarine, cinnamon and bitter almond notes all zipped up with a bitter orange thread on the finish.
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Wine Enthusiast
A superbly dense, concentrated wine so rich in flavor that it almost has a brooding, dark quality. The hint of medicinal character just gives all this intensity a lift, and goes with flavors of roasted nuts and licorice. The aftertaste has just the right acidity.
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Decanter
Warm and nutty, with chocolate and coffee tones to the creamy, mouth-filling fruit leading to a serious and long finish.
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.