Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
This has gained length, cut and nuance with age, offering a mix of hazelnut husk, date, singed sesame, buckwheat, bitter cocoa and black currant paste flavors, all laced with a streak of green tea. Touriga Nacional, Touriga Francesa, Tinta Cão, Tinta Roriz and Tinta Barocca.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 1969 Very Old Single Harvest Tawny Port comes in with 158 grams of residual sugar. It was bottled in November 2018 with a bar-top cork. The latest release in Taylor's 50-year Colheita program, this doesn't show a lot of energy, and it has a little bitterness on the finish. It is laced with a touch of treacle on opening, but that blends in well after some time. I enjoyed the complexity. It seems very mature in other ways, though, rather soft with relatively little intensity. That's all relative, of course. It still drinks well and tastes great in a very understated way. (I'd add that this, unlike most old tawnies, actually showed better as it warmed closer to room temperature.) Of recent releases in this program, I'd have to pick some of the others, granting that they aren't all here together. The next day, it tasted great, but it sometimes seemed a touch flat. For all of that, I still rather liked this for its freshness and elegance.
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.