Sandeman 30 Year Old Tawny
Winemaker Notes
Critical Acclaim
All VintagesThis is a beautifully concentrated wine. Rich and dense, it offers dried fruits, spice and intensity. The wine’s spirit edge acts as a lift, bringing out acidity, honey, walnuts and a complex perfumed aftertaste. Drink now
The NV 30 Years Old Tawny Porto is a typical Douro blend. It was bottled in August 2022 with a Vinolok stopper and 121 grams per liter of residual sugar. Complex and darker in flavors, yet still lively and fresh, this elegant 30 Year first shows its age when it coats the palate and proves how concentrated it is. It is remarkably delicious too, with the dark chocolate and caramel-laced fruit slammed into the palate. The melted chocolate of the 20 Year leans more to dark chocolate here, but it never goes too far in the direction of bitter. If it often seems mature, it never seems old. It's always enlivening, and the structure might be even better that the fine flavor profile. It acquires a tightly wound feel and some power on the juicy, mouthwatering finish. This is a fine success. Best after 2022.
Candied cherries and light caramel with honey and brown sugar on the nose. Dense and rich with plenty of mahogany and nutty undertones to the very sweet palate. Shows lots of age. Sort of dusty and aged, like old furniture in England. Drink now.
This wine had W&S associate editor David Paradela imagining himself on a velvet couch in an old library. Maybe it has the comforting complexity of being surrounded by all the ideas in old books. At your dinner table, it may bring to mind dried cherries and apricots, along with the warmth of toasted almond in their tawny skins.
The House of Sandeman was founded in London in 1790 by George Sandeman, a young Scotsman from Perth who borrowed £300 to invest in a wine trading business with products from Porto and Jerez. More than 230 years later, an average of 21 bottles of Sandeman are bought every minute in more than 75 countries. The Sandeman portfolio includes Ports, Sherries and Madeira's and has been recognized as the world's most awarded portfolio of Aged Tawnies for the past six years by Decanter, IWC and IWSC.
As for the infamous Sandeman Don, a Scottish artist named George Massiot Brown approached Sandeman in 1928 to design a poster to advertise the brand. Incorporating the company's Ports of Portugal and their Spanish Sherries, The Don is wearing a wide-brimmed Spanish had like the caballeros of Jerez and a Portuguese student's cape. The Don became famous and was one of the very first design icons for wine. Today the Don has become part of the very essence of the Sandeman brand and can be found on every bottle sold.
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.
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.