Ferreira Porto Vintage Port 2018
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Deep color, almost opaque, with intense and complex aromas with floral and balsamic notes, combined with resin, cedar, tobacco box, black fruits, spices, pepper, and a slightly stony touch. On the palate it has excellent body, very well integrated acidity, powerful tannins, and notes of spices with a long, lively finish of great harmony.
Blend: 45% Touriga Franca, 40% Touriga Nacional, 10% Vinhas Velhas, 5% Sousão
The structure of this extraordinary wine, rich and elegant, is a perfect match to dark chocolate, red and wild berries desserts and intense cheeses, such as a strong blue cheese.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
This impressively structured wine shows a perfect balance between its powerful, spicy fruits and firm tannins. Dense tones of dark berries and smoke are rich and flavorful, bringing the wine to a perfect conclusion. It's immensely ageworthy. Drink from 2030.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2018 Vintage Port is a roughly equal blend of Touriga Franca and Touriga Nacional with 10% a field blend from old vines and a smaller dollop of Sousáo, coming in with 103 grams of residual sugar. My favorite of the three Sogrape offerings just now—if the Sandeman comes into good balance a decade on, it might be the winner—this is an elegant Port with stunning fruit and excellent structure too. Perfectly put together and seeming drier than its statistics would suggest, this is a potential beauty. It is more expressive than its siblings (including the Offley and Sandeman). If it is not as rich as the Sandeman, it is fresher, more precise and more lifted. It should hold well. When tasted the next day, it tightened up with additional aeration, but it was still approachable. I loved its purity, in particular, at that point. It now has to prove it can evolve and age. It should. Range: 94-96
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Wine Spectator
Polished and suave in feel, with a hint of dark tea curling up from the core of steeped plum, blackberry and black currant preserve flavors. Lots of juicy energy coiled up through the finish, where graphite and licorice-snap notes assert themselves. Touriga Nacional and Touriga Franca. Best from 2030 through 2045.
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James Suckling
Aromas of raisins and blackberry marmalade with hints of sweet spices and dark chocolate. Full and creamy with firm, grainy tannins and a sweet dark-fruited character. Dense and meaty with a chewy finish.
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Since 1751, the Ferreira name has been synonymous with high-quality Portuguese wines. The first Portuguese owned Port house, its history is intertwined with the evolution of the Douro Region and its wines.
The story of Ferreira is inextricably associated with one extraordinary woman. Daughter of one of the company’s founders, Dona Antónia Adelaide Ferreira was born in the country town of Régua, gateway to the wines of the Douro Valley, in 1811. Though small in stature and reserved by nature, Dona Antónia was charismatic, visionary and entrepreneurial. She created new expanses of terraced vineyards and improved the hard lives of local farming families. The local people’s affectionately called her 'A Ferreirinha' – 'the little Ferreira.' When 'The Ferreirinha' died in 1896, she left behind a portfolio of great Douro estates and an immensely successful business.
Today, more than 250 years after its foundation, Ferreira is the only great Porto Wine house to have always remained in Portuguese family hands. Ferreira is quintessentially Portuguese and a benchmark in excellent, quality Ports. It is a symbol of the country and culture it proudly honors.
Port is a sweet, fortified wine with numerous styles: Ruby, Tawny, Vintage, Late Bottled Vintage (LBV), White, Colheita, and a few unusual others. It is blended from from the most important red grapes of the Douro Valley, based primarily on Touriga Nacional with over 80 other varieties approved for use. Most Ports are best served slightly chilled at around 55-65°F.
The home of Port—perhaps the most internationally acclaimed beverage—the Douro region of Portugal is one of the world’s oldest delimited wine regions, established in 1756. The vineyards of the Douro, set on the slopes surrounding the Douro River (known as the Duero in Spain), are incredibly steep, necessitating the use of terracing and thus, manual vineyard management as well as harvesting. The Douro's best sites, rare outcroppings of Cambrian schist, are reserved for vineyards that yield high quality Port.
While more than 100 indigenous varieties are approved for wine production in the Douro, there are five primary grapes that make up most Port and the region's excellent, though less known, red table wines. Touriga Nacional is the finest of these, prized for its deep color, tannins and floral aromatics. Tinta Roriz (Spain's Tempranillo) adds bright acidity and red fruit flavors. Touriga Franca shows great persistence of fruit and Tinta Barroca helps round out the blend with its supple texture. Tinta Cão, a fine but low-yielding variety, is now rarely planted but still highly valued for its ability to produce excellent, complex wines.
White wines, generally crisp, mineral-driven blends of Arinto, Viosinho, Gouveio, Malvasia Fina and an assortment of other rare but local varieties, are produced in small quantities but worth noting.
With hot summers and cool, wet winters, the Duoro has a maritime climate.