Winemaker Notes
Dow's Senhora da Ribeira can be enjoyed anytime and pairs wonderfully with chocolate desserts and soft cheeses like creamy Stilton or Roquefort.
Professional Ratings
-
Wine Enthusiast
This Port comes from a vineyard across the Douro from Quinta do Vesúvio. It is supremely elegant, with sophisticated black and red fruits that are sustained by a layer of fine, dusty tannins. On the dry side for a Vintage, it has acidity, structure and obviously great potential for aging. Drink from 2025
-
James Suckling
Intense aromas of minerals, ash, green herbs, wet soil and blackberries. Full-bodied and lightly sweet with excellent tannin grip and structure. Very long and intense. This is sleek and wonderfully put together. Interesting how it?s made from a vineyard across the Douro Valley from Quinta do Vesuvio, yet shows distinctively different character.
-
Wine & Spirits
A vibrant, floral, strawberry-scented Port, this feels cool in its blue fruit purity. Schisty tannins support the ripe fruit without blackening it, the wine ending elegant and refined. A clean, modern style that’s drinking well on release, it’s suited to age for ten or 15 years.
-
Wine Spectator
Offers focused minerality to the refined red plum and raspberry flavors, accented by a snap of licorice. Lithe, complex and well-structured, this delivers plenty of grip for aging. Best from 2020 through 2045.
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.