Winemaker Notes
Full-bodied, rich and perfectly balanced, Dow’s Late Bottled Vintage Ports are carefully selected to reflect the unique characteristics of each vintage, and are only bottled in the best years. Dow’s 2016 Late Bottled Vintage Port shares the same provenance with Dow’s legendary Vintage Ports, the iconic Douro properties of Quinta do Bomfim and Quinta Senhora da Ribeira. Aged in seasoned oak vats four to six years before bottling and release (ready to drink), and carrying Dow’s distinctive drier finish, this is an LBV worthy of attention.
Professional Ratings
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Wine & Spirits
Finely integrated and luscious, this is the kind of baby Vintage Port an LBV should aspire to be: Dark-fruited, the wine’s juicy wild-blueberry flavors have energy and supple grace. It could find a home with braised game, like boar, and after, with a cheese course
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James Suckling
Blackberries with some dried fruit and hints of sultanas. Slightly lifted. It’s medium-bodied with lovely sweetness and a lightly chewy and grippy ending that turns sweet and slightly dry at the end. Delicious Port.
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Wine Spectator
Solid, with a polished set of violet, plum cake, blackberry reduction and ganache flavors cruising through and an echo of Black Forest cake lingering on the finish. This would do nicely in a decanter over a weekend.
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.