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A great Malvedos with typical minty aomas and undertones of cacao and berry fruits. The mouth has a firm tannic structure and succulent blackberry flavours. A bold, powerful wine promising many years in bottle. A true Malvedos thoroughbred.
Wine Description
The Story
The extraordinary quality of the wines from the Malvedos vineyard is such that in Vintage declarations these wines provide the main structure of Graham’s classic Vintage Ports. In most interim years, the wines from Malvedos merit bottling as a Single Quinta Vintage Port: Graham’s Quinta dos Malvedos Vintage Port.
Graham’s Malvedos Vintage Ports have won an astonishing collection of awards at the world’s major international wine competitions over recent years, with 14 Gold medalsover the last two decades, clearly outperforming all other Quinta Vintage Ports.
Like the great wines from the top estates of Bordeaux, Single Quinta Vintage Port is made from the grapes of a single harvest and from an individual estate. Single Quinta Vintage Ports are produced and bottled in the same way as Vintage Ports, but they are made in undeclared years. These wines are very similar, and very good value alternatives, to classic Vintages and express the character of the terroir from which they come.Malvedos Vintage Ports are bottled without filtration and so will continue to age like a classic Vintage Port. They are usually drunk approximately 8-10 years after harvest but will almost always continue to age well for far longer.
Graham’s Malvedos Vintage Port presents the Graham’s style admirably, with its expressive floral characteristics and opulent blackberry fruit flavours. It is usually more approachable at a younger age than classic Vintage Port, therefore providing an excellent alternative while waiting for the latter to fully mature. Quinta dos Malvedos 1988 Vintage Port was the first ever Port (and in fact, the first ever Portuguese wine) to be ranked in the prestigious Wine Spectator’s annual ‘Top 100 Wines of the World'. It also won gold medals in two consecutive years at the London International Wine Challenge.
Wine Information
Although Touriga Nacional took centre stage in much of the Douro Valley in 2019, at Malvedos it played second fiddle
to Touriga Franca, a variety that almost invariably performs extremely well at Quinta dos Malvedos (it was also the main component in the 2018 Malvedos Vintage Port and in the back-to- back classic Vintage declarations of 2016 and 2017. This Touriga Franca was drawn mainly from the mature Valdossa vineyards,planted in the mid-1980s. The highly valued stone terraces parcels (old, field-blended vines) are also an important component of this 2019, contributing superb depth and complexity to the wine.
Vintage 2019
We had a very dry and mild winter and spring, and by late summer the vines were in need of water to keep maturations on track. Fortunately, the virtual absence of rain from May to late August was counterbalanced by cooler summer conditions, and we also benefited at Malvedos from exceptionally well-timed rain at the end of August (22mm), which made a real difference, two weeks before the vintage was due to start. Then, halfway through the harvest, over the weekend of September 21st, we had some further useful showers bringing just the right amount of rain, which fine-tuned the Touriga Nacional and proved critical for the complete ripening of the Touriga Franca.
The cooler harvest translated into comparatively lower concentration than we’ve seen in recent vintages and yields were closer to normal following the very small years of 2017 and 2018. Expressive aromas and freshness are the hallmarks of the 2019 wines.