Quinta Da Romaneira Vintage Porto 2017 (750ml)

 

Rated 95 Points by James Suckling

 

A full-bodied Romaneira with plums, blackberries and dried fruits.  Shows the heat of the vintage.  Full and sweet with lots of candied plum character.  Uniformly declared year.  Give this five years still.

 

Rated 94 Points by Wine Spectator

 

Juicy and energetic in feel, this brims with cherry, blackberry and plum compote flavors, backed by red licorice, briar and chocolate notes.  The long finish reveals a lush coating around an inner cable of refined tannins.  Touriga Nacional and Touriga Franca.  Best from 2035 through 2055.

 

Rated 93 Points by Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate

 

The 2017 Vintage Port is mostly Touriga Nacional (70%), with the rest Touriga Franca, aged for 20 months in neutral tonels.  It comes in with 89 grams of residual sugar.  This was in bottle only a couple of weeks when tasted.  This seems rich and fruity on opening, but not much more.  Its fruit is just delicious, but I didn't get the sense of structure I saw from the 2016 last year.  Yet, with two hours of air in a glass, this really blossomed, showing fine power, more focus and a serious backbone to go with its ripe fruit.  This is another fine Romaneira, but I'm not sure yet that it exceeds the performance of the fine 2016.  We will have to see how that goes in time and over the years.

 

Rated 92 Points by Wine Enthusiast

 

Dense, ripe and already open, this is a concentrated wine that has balanced tannins and juicy black currant fruits.  Its richness is tempered by the fresh, dry streak of acidity and tannins.  Drink from 2028.

 

Quinta Da Romaneira Vintage Port 2017

 

The wines of Quinta Da Romaneira always have an aromatic intensity that is particular to this great vineyard terroir.  This 2017 vintage port is seductive, charming and wonderfully expressive, with serious depth and ageing potential.  Deep dark ruby-purple color with intense spicy aromatic personality.  Great elegance, pure fruit flavors, fleshy, velvety tannins, great power and length and very long finish.

 

Grape Varieties:  70% Touriga Nacional 30% Touriga Francesa

 

Vinification

 

The grapes were trodden by foot in the stainless steel lagares of our new winery, and fermented with temperature control at 28 C, where a disciplined and intense treading is fundamental for a good final result.

 

Ageing

 

20 months in the cellars of the Quinta, in the demarcated region of the Douro Valley before bottling.  It should age in the bottle for 8 to 15 years before attaining the complexity and bouquet characteristic of a vintage.

 

Vintage 2017

 

2017 was the earliest harvest on record.  The growing season was unusually dry and hot, both during spring and summer, with prolonged hot spells during the summer, particularly in June.  Rainfall was alarmingly low throughout the year, with a short spell of significant rainfall in early July which certainly did much to help the vines during the hot dry weeks that followed.  Volumes were consequently low, and ripeness came early.  Our harvest began in August and was finished before the end of September.  The weather was hot and dry throughout the harvest.

 

 

Quinta da Romaneira

 

Quinta da Romaneira is located next to the Douro River, in the heart of Cima Corgo – the center of the three wine production zones of Port and Douro.

We are located in Cotas, between Pinhão and Alijó, about an hour and a half from Porto and five hours from Lisbon.

 

Romaneira is one of the largest estates in the region, totaling 412 hectares and boasting 3 kilometers of river frontage on the Douro River.  The vines are planted in terraces on the property's steep slopes.  With numerous valleys and promontories, Romaneira features diverse microclimates and various slopes facing southeast, south, and southwest.  Several Romaneira wines are specific to the location and originate from small individual plots within the Quinta.  Other wines, such as Dona Clara or Reserva, come from various locations throughout the Quinta, reflecting the complexity and diversity of the entire vineyard.  All our wines are made exclusively from grapes grown in our own vineyard, a distinctive characteristic of Quinta da Romaneira wines.

 

A redefined and redesigned range of wines

 

Quinta da Romaneira is a vast property, with nearly four kilometres of river frontage on the majestic Douro River.  Within our 412 hectares, 86 hectares are planted with vines, in various sites within the property, at different altitudes and with different aspects.  The ensemble makes up a great individual terroir, that of Quinta da Romaneira, and we have wines that are made up of selections from parcels throughout our vineyard.  But within the territory of Romaneira, there exist many micro terroirs, distinguished by their unique situation, planted often with one noble grape variety, perfectly suited to that specific place, that aspect, that elevation.  For this reason, we decided to redefine our wine range, and to redesign our labels to reflect this new precision as to the individual origins of each wine.  Each wine produced at Romaneira now has a label with an engraved image reflecting the identity of the wine and the place where the grapes come from that make the wine.  We also have three blended red wines that use sources from all over the quinta.

 

Port Wines

 

Quinta da Romaneira is today known for its range of Douro red and white wines, which constitute the majority of our production.  However, we dedicate a significant portion of our vineyard to the production of a full range of Port wines.  All of our Port wines come exclusively from our own vineyards, so at all quality levels, our Ports are terroir wines, expressions of the unique personality of our Quinta.  Romaneira is one of the great historic Port wine estates, known for producing Vintage and Tawny Ports of the highest quality for two centuries.  Today, our Vintage Ports and our Colheitas in particular once again manage to express the unique grandeur of our terroir, historically recognized as one of the great vineyards in the Douro Valley.

 

Vineyard

 

The decision to renovate Romaneira in 2004 was based on the belief, justified since then by the extraordinary quality of the wines we have been able to produce, that Romaneira possesses one of the great viticultural terroirs of the Douro.  Our old vines have been lovingly renovated and cared for.  Vines have also been replanted, offering a broader expression of the various microclimates and individual terroirs of the Quinta.  The vineyard now has 86 hectares planted, mainly with the noble Douro grape varieties Touriga Nacional, Touriga Francesa, Tinta Roriz and Tinto Cão, but also a significant proportion of white grapes (Gouveio, Viosinho, Boal and Rabigato).  We also have several hectares planted with Syrah and Petit Verdot, both producing excellent results at Romaneira, both as specific varietal wines of the location and in the Dona Clara blend.

 

Cellar

 

Although technology alone cannot make a great wine, without the right tools even a good team with a great terroir can find life difficult.  We decided to build a new winery in Romaneira in 2005.  For Christian Seely and Antonio Agrellos, this was a long-dreamed-of opportunity to build, from scratch, the ideal Douro Valley winery.  Most Douro wineries are far from ideal, dating back to their 18th or even 17th-century origins.  This makes them very picturesque, but generally not very practical.  In Romaneira, we were able to dig a large hole in the ground and then build the winery we wanted, two-thirds underground (aesthetically very beautiful but also very practical for storing wines in cool and stable conditions).  Our lagares (wine presses) are made of stainless steel, meaning that in addition to all the traditional advantages of foot treading for Port wine, we also benefit from the technical ability to heat and cool them.  Our winery consists of temperature-controlled, truncated conical stainless steel tanks, which gives us the flexibility needed to fully express the personality of the Romaneira vineyard.

 

History

 

18th and 19th Centuries

 

In 1757, at the time of the Pombaline demarcations, there were already plots of vineyards, as well as some of the estates that would become part of Romaneira.  Thus, 1757 is only the year of the official registration of the estate (made at the time of these demarcations decided by the Marquis of Pombal), since the vines would have been planted some decades earlier.

Father Vilaça Bacelar inherited the lands of Romaneira in 1844 and did not go unnoticed by Joseph James Forrester when he created his engraving of Rua Nova dos Ingleses (today Rua Infante D. Henrique).  The priest is among the few Portuguese figures residing in Porto to be portrayed, obviously accompanied by numerous Englishmen.  Curiously, Romaneira has had its commercial office on that same street in the city of Porto since 2011.  Romaneira also appears on the famous Map of Baron Forrester, dated 1843, with the name "Quinta dos Reis".  The abundance of rosemary would later give the property its current name.

Still in the 19th century, Joaquim de Souza Guimarães (whose initials are present at the top of a gate of one of the Quinta's houses, dated 1854) had the glory of producing the Port wines of 1861 and 1863, which the British auction house "Christie's" put up for sale in 1872.  This was a clear indication of the brand's prestige, considering it was the first Single Quinta Port to be auctioned there.

Several references are made to the property in works by great 19th-century authors, such as Henry Vizetelly, who dedicated himself to the study of Port wine.  The Viscount of Vila Maior also classified Romaneira wine as "one of the best in the Douro, notable for its smoothness, body and aroma".  The same Viscount mentioned that the Tempranillo grape variety was originally imported from Spain and first introduced to the Douro at Romaneira, later being called Tinta Roriz.
 
20th Century

In 1942, Arnaldo Dias Monteiro de Barros bought Romaneira, incorporating several neighboring estates he had acquired in the meantime, making Romaneira an extremely large property by Douro standards.
 
21st Century
 

In 2004, Christian Seely turned his dream into reality, bringing together a group of investors to acquire Romaneira, a property with 412 hectares and more than 3 kilometers of river frontage.  Since then, Romaneira has benefited from extensive renovation, reconstruction, and replanting.
 

In late 2012, André Esteves, a Brazilian businessman also passionate about the Douro region, became the main shareholder of Romaneira, in partnership with Christian Seely.  With both partners sharing the same dream, the Quinta has since consolidated its position among the elite producers of Douro wines and Port wines.  Today, after more than 260 years of existence, Quinta da Romaneira expresses through its wines the full potential of the grandeur of its historic terroir.  Many of the vineyard plots continue to bear the names of the old pre-phylloxera properties that were originally acquired to create the Romaneira vineyard as it exists today:

Liceiras, Carrapata, Malhadal, Barca, Bairral and Pulga – most of them classified in the Pombaline demarcations of 1757 as producers of "Vinho de Feitoria" (the highest quality at the time – with export capacity through the "English Factory" of Porto).

 

 

Rated 94 Points by Wine Spectator

 

Juicy and energetic in feel, this brims with cherry, blackberry and plum compote flavors, backed by red licorice, briar and chocolate notes.  The long finish reveals a lush coating around an inner cable of refined tannins.  Touriga Nacional and Touriga Franca.  Best from 2035 through 2055.

 

 

 

Rated 92 Points by Wine Enthusiast

 

Dense, ripe and already open, this is a concentrated wine that has balanced tannins and juicy black currant fruits.  Its richness is tempered by the fresh, dry streak of acidity and tannins.  Drink from 2028.