Sandeman Vintage Port 2016
Winemaker Notes
Critical Acclaim
All VintagesThis is a ripe and generous wine, with tannins that are well integrated into the powerful black-fruit core. It is rich in a black plum flavor that's cut by fine acidity. Complex, balanced and full of long-term potential, drink this impressive wine from 2029.
Cellar Selection
The 2016 Vintage Porto is a mostly an equal blend of Touriga Nacional and Touriga Franca, with various others comprising the last 20% of the juice. It comes in with 95 grams of residual sugar. This was in bottle about two months when tasted. Dark in color, with fine and expressive fruit, this shows intensity of flavor more than pure power. The fruit demonstrates nice lift as it opens with air. As with the Offley, this is a very nice success in this vintage, showing me fine fruit and reasonable structure. The concentration is good too, but it's not quite as impressive as the first two components. It is still excellent overall, the most exuberant of the three Sogrape Portos. We'll see how it ages and develops. For the moment, it is worth leaning up.
Tightly knit nose, with firm berry fruit plus more savory, meaty lines. Nascent black fruit core to the dense, gritty palate.
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.
