Barros Ruby Port
£15.25
The wine
Deep ruby-red in colour, elegant and intense with heaps of black fruit on the nose. Strong and exuberant, but with remarkable fresh fruit flavours. The everyday Barros, and a proper introduction to the house.
Ruby is the youngest Port style, aged two or three years in large vats where limited contact with air preserves the deep colour and fresh fruit. Fortification with grape spirit stops fermentation while sugar remains, which is what makes Port sweet and takes it to around 20 per cent alcohol. Made from the traditional Douro field-blend varieties.
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.
