Smith Woodhouse Vintage Port 2007
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Robert
Product Details
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Winemaker Notes
Pair with: chocolate desserts, such as chocolate mousse, creamy blue cheeses like Stilton or Roquefort.
Professional Ratings
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Wine & Spirits
A formidable vintage of Smith-Woodhouse, this wine is deep and rich with cool, spicy flavor. There's a dark berry thrust, parried by alcohol and black tannin, the fruit winning out in the end. It's juicy, with an ethereal balance and a hint of volatility that seems to add to the wine's energy. Smith usually drinks well 15 to 20 years from the vintage; this one may benefit from more time.
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Wine Enthusiast
As often happens, this lesser brand from the Symington Family Estates stable has produced an impressive vintage. It is structured, while also attractive, lively and fresh. There is a light layer of sweetness, the fruit bold and black, finishing with a fine, juicy aftertaste.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The purple/black-colored 2007 Smith Woodhouse Vintage Port exhibits an alluring bouquet of mineral, pencil lead, espresso, violets, black currant, and fruitcake. Dense and structured on the palate, it has an excellent integration of alcohol, acidity, and tannin. It should be one of the longer lived wines of the vintage with 12-15+ years of aging potential and a drinking window extending through 2037.
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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.
Best known for intense, impressive and age-worthy fortified wines, Portugal relies almost exclusively on its many indigenous grape varieties. Bordering Spain to its north and east, and the Atlantic Ocean on its west and south coasts, this is a land where tradition reigns supreme, due to its relative geographical and, for much of the 20th century, political isolation. A long and narrow but small country, Portugal claims considerable diversity in climate and wine styles, with milder weather in the north and significantly more rainfall near the coast.
While Port (named after its city of Oporto on the Atlantic Coast at the end of the Douro Valley), made Portugal famous, Portugal is also an excellent source of dry red and white Portuguese wines of various styles.
The Douro Valley produces full-bodied and concentrated dry red Portuguese wines made from the same set of grape varieties used for Port, which include Touriga Nacional, Tinta Roriz (Spain’s Tempranillo), Touriga Franca, Tinta Barroca and Tinto Cão, among a long list of others in minor proportions.
Other dry Portuguese wines include the tart, slightly effervescent Vinho Verde white wine, made in the north, and the bright, elegant reds and whites of the Dão as well as the bold, and fruit-driven reds and whites of the southern, Alentejo.
The nation’s other important fortified wine, Madeira, is produced on the eponymous island off the North African coast.