Quinta da Romaneira LBV Port Unfiltered 2019
£23.45
The wine
The wines from Romaneira always have an aromatic intensity particular to this great terroir. Seductive, charming and very expressive, with great depth and ageing potential. Deep dark ruby-purple, with multiple spices, wild berries and violets, pure fruit flavours, fleshy velvety tannins and a very long finish.
Late Bottled Vintage is Port from a single year, aged four to six years in wood before bottling. Unfiltered LBV keeps its sediment and continues to develop in bottle, behaving much more like a Vintage Port than the filtered version, and needs decanting. Fortification stops the fermentation with grape spirit, leaving natural sweetness and the tannin intact.
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.
