Fonseca 10 Year Old Tawny
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Fonseca Ten Year Old Tawny Port is russet in color with brilliant crimson highlights and a fragrant, ripe-fruit bouquet. Its smooth, silky texture and subtle oak nuances are balanced by a fresh acidity and tannic "grip" that culminate in a long, elegant, plummy finish.
Tawny Ports of age will not improve once bottled; they should be served at room temperature or barely cool at the end of a meal with nuts or not overly-sweet desserts.
Professional Ratings
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Wine & Spirits
Fruit interprets the alcohol in this wine with the orange-citrus scent of rum cake. Then Douro schist cuts the sweetness and strengthens the fruit presence to fuller pear, hazelnut and wildflower honey notes. It ends on a long, peppery buzz, delicious and satisfying.
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Wine Enthusiast
In the full Fonseca style, this aged tawny shows both rich fruit and a more serious wood-aged character. Good acidity follows the sweet initial taste, broadening into ripe flavors of nut, plum jelly, and a final crisp acidity.
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Wine Spectator
Refined, with bright flavors of dried berry, plum compote and cherry tart that are long and lush. Very creamy on the finish, which features chocolate mousse.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The NV 10 Year Old Tawny was bottled in 2013 with a bar top cork. It comes in at 106.7 grams per liter of residual sugar. Some Ports emphasize flavor, others emphasize structure. This starts out with perfect focus, elegant but increasingly intense on the tight finish. Early on, it was all about the structure, with a haze of velvet. The flavors were a bit muted initially, but it unfolded into an elegant and graceful whole with a flavorful finish. Its bright, clean feel always remains as it fleshes out and puts on weight.
From the legendary 1840, Fonseca's first Vintage Port release, to the superb declared vintages of the last decade, the house has produced a succession of highly acclaimed wines even in the most adverse moments of history.
This consistency derives not only from continuity of family involvement, and the knowledge and skill passed down from one generation to the next, but also a close link with the vineyard. The firm's three estates of Cruzeiro, Panascal and Santo António are the heart of the distinctive character of Fonseca's Vintage Ports.
Fonseca's respect for the vineyard and the unique environment of the Douro Valley expresses itself in the firm's leadership in the field of sustainable and organic viticulture. It was the first house to offer a Port made entirely from organically produced grapes.
As it approaches its bicentenary, Fonseca can take pride in its past and look forward to the future with confidence. Wine drinkers increasingly seek wines of authenticity and character with a genuine story to tell and made by creative winemakers who understand their terroir and respect the environment.
Perhaps more than any other Port house, Fonseca has built a loyal community of Port enthusiasts who value its individuality and the inimitable character of its wines. These include connoisseurs, collectors, sommeliers and restaurateurs as well as those who simply enjoy drinking its wonderfully rich and complex Ports.
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.