Barros 10 Year Old Tawny Port (Gift Box)
£25.45
The wine
With a brown-tawny colour, dried fruit aromas are complemented by delicate vanilla and chocolate notes through to a soft, silky palate with subtle oak nuances and a long, elegant finish. Presented in a gift box.
Tawny Port is aged in small oak casks called pipes, where slow deliberate oxidation strips the colour to amber and builds nutty, dried-fruit complexity. The ten-year designation is an average age rather than a minimum, blended to a consistent house style. Ready on release, and it keeps for weeks once opened. Presented in a gift box.
The producer
Barros
View all Barros winesBarros was founded in 1913 by Manoel de Almeida and José Barros, and celebrated its centenary a little over a decade ago. It sits among the most prestigious of the Port houses, and its reputation rests on one style in particular.
Colheita is Port from a single declared year, aged in cask rather than bottle for a minimum of seven years and frequently for far longer. It is the most demanding of the tawny styles, because a single vintage must carry the wine alone through decades of slow oxidation without the safety net of blending. Barros keep theirs in wood well beyond the legal minimum, and the house holds one of the deepest reserves of old Colheita in the Douro.
The lodges are at Vila Nova de Gaia, across the river from Porto, where Port has been aged since the eighteenth century because the cool damp air off the Atlantic suits long cask maturation far better than the fierce heat of the Douro valley itself. Ruby, White, LBV, Vintage and both tawny ages complete the range.
