Winemaker Notes
This is a well balanced and delightful Vintage Port, with flavors of dark plum and mint chocolate. Full and ripe tannins show the aging capacity of this young port.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2021 Pintas Vintage Port shows the voluptuous character of the place and is quite different from Quinta da Manoela. This comes from the lower part of the vineyard. It's super dark, almost black, and completely opaque. It's very young, jammy and has notes of black olives, graphite, soil, something salty (it made me think of the sea) and resinous notes of something floral. It's tannic, as young Vintage has to be, but the tannins are fine and elegant. It's still a baby, and you can drink it, but the complexity will come with years in bottle.
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Wine Spectator
Youthfully compact, but with good coiled-up, juicy energy, which should allow the dark plum, fig and blackberry reduction notes to meld steadily with the backdrop of alder, licorice root and baker's chocolate. Shows serious density and grip for the vintage, too. Best from 2040 through 2060.
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James Suckling
Pure violet essence and ripe baked fruit. Cherry compote, dark chocolate, baked blackberries and licorice. A vintage Port that’s loaded with fine, chalky tannins that manage to grow on the palate. Broad, sleek and long with slight warmth in the finish. Drink from 2027.
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.