Barros Special Reserve Port
£19.75
The wine
Vibrant ruby with violet nuances, presenting a complex and sweet bouquet of red fruits. Intense in the mouth, large, well structured and with a long aromatic persistence. A significant step up from the standard Ruby.
Special Reserve is a premium ruby, blended from better lots and given longer ageing than the standard bottling before release. The category sits between Ruby and LBV, and requires approval by the Port Institute's tasting panel to carry the Reserve designation, which is not granted automatically.
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.
