Quinta da Romaneira 10 Year Old Tawny Port
£27.75
The wine
Pale brick-red tawny in colour. With a complex aroma, the vibrant young fruit blends deliciously with the attractive and characteristic dried fruit and nut aromas. Rich and smooth on the palate, with an elegant structure and a long finish.
Tawny Port is aged in small oak casks 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. Unlike Vintage Port it is ready on release, and it keeps for weeks once opened.
The producer
Quinta da Romaneira
View all Quinta da Romaneira winesEstablished in 1757, Quinta da Romaneira is one of the largest single estates in the Douro: 412 hectares with three kilometres of river frontage, of which 86 are planted to vines.
The Douro was the world's first demarcated wine region, mapped and regulated in 1756, so the estate is almost exactly as old as the appellation itself. Its vineyards are cut into terraces on hillsides steep enough that mechanisation is impossible in much of the property, and the soil is schist, a layered rock that splits vertically and lets roots drive deep in search of water. That is what allows vines to survive summers in which the valley regularly exceeds forty degrees.
The many valleys and promontories of the estate give it a range of exposures and several distinct microclimates, which is why single-parcel wines like Liceiras and Mirante make sense here. Both Port and Douro table wine are made, and both are taken equally seriously, which was not always true of Douro estates. The table wines in particular have become some of the most admired in northern Portugal.
