Portugal | 75cl
£275.00
ABV: 20%
Size: 75cl
Country: Portugal
This wine was produced under the watchful eye of a team led by Luis Sottomayor, who is renowned for his ageing and blending of Port wines. The pinnacle, in terms of excellence, of Sandeman's range of Aged Tawnies, this blended wine consists of wines with an average age of 50-year-old. It forms part of a range of remarkable consistency that has won international acclaim. A golden colour with greenish tints. An aroma of good aromatic intensity and excellent complexity with balsamic notes of cedar and tobacco box, hints of wax and ginger, and spices such as pepper. It has further notes of caramelised fruit and jammy apricots. On the palate, it has good volume and a vibrant acidity with prominent notes of spices and crystallised fruit that invite an extraordinarily long and elegant finish.
WINE ENTHUSIAST 96 points
Critic tasting note: "Taking advantage of the newly created 50-year-old tawny category, this famous producer has launched a dense, intense Port. The wine's concentration is immense, wood and old gold flavors almost incidental in an age defying wine. Drink this fine wine now."
THE WINE ADVOCATE 94 points
Drink Date: 2022 - 2060
The NV 50 Years Old Tawny Porto is a typical Douro field blend bottled in April 2022 with a Vinolok stopper and 124.8 grams per liter of residual sugar. Is this a step up qualitatively over the lovely 40 Year? I'd say the 40 is better, but that's a hard question to answer because this seems so differently styled. Most of the age-indicated Tawnies from Sandeman have some stylistic similarity. This does too, but if you were going to pick one in the group as an outlier, this is it. It seems drier and sterner. The most notable difference is in some power, the way this attacks on the finish in a fairly stern fashion and seems to brood. It dries as it lingers and leans a little more to the brandy side of the ledger (without becoming hot). It maintains the otherwise elegant style and relatively lively demeanor, relative to age, of its siblings. It is by far the darkest and most nuanced of the Tawnies, and it is very concentrated. Complexity is often the biggest selling point for me, but I'd still pick the lusher but still intense 40 Year as my favorite of the group. That certainly has plenty of complexity on its own, but this wins on power. Pick 'em. While mine is the 40, this 50 might do even better if you like to pair them with cheeses and the like. - Mark Squires
