Casa do Raposo Fine Ruby Port

Country: Portugal
Region: Douro
Alcohol: 20%
Price: €19,95
Closure: T-Cap

Casa do Raposo Fine Ruby Port is produced by Casal dos Jordoes, one of the first organic port producers. This producer is one of the smaller producers in the Douro producing around 140,000 litres of port, of which they bring 35,000 litres onto the market under their own labels, and 275,000 litre of table wine from their 50 hectares. Alongside this they also produce olives from 13 hectares of olive grove.

This ruby port is produced from a blend of the Touriga Franca (Francesca) (60%), Tinta Roriz (20%), Tinta Barroca (10%) and Touriga Nacional (10%) grapes.  These four varieties along with Tinta Cao and Tinta Amarela make up the most important grapes in port production (of the forty eight grapes types permitted).  Touriga Franca provides structure along with a mix of fruit and floral characters, Tinta Roriz (tempranillo) provides firm structure and flavors/aromas of dried cherries and spice, Tinta Barroca provides a high sugar content, floral aromatics, black cherries, plums and purple flowers, and finally the Touriga Nacional provides deep colour, structure and rich flavours of black fruit.

Ruby Port is the most basic of port styles and is generally made with a blend of red grape varieties and blends from several years. It is generally a drink now port, although there are examples of unfiltered Ruby ports that will allow some bottle aging.  This port is port is one of those unfiltered examples with the etiquette suggesting that decanting is required.  Not too sure how long it will age, but after more than a week in the bottle it was still going strong.

Anyway, what do I think of this Ruby Port:

As expected a really deep purple in colour. Plenty of fruit on the nose with spirit coming through as well. Smooth on the palate with plenty of good, juicy, concentrated, sweet fruit. Really quite sweet but the acid combined with the grape spirit gives the wine a good balance. Tannins are quite light on, as expected, which means a really easy drink exactly as a ruby port should be. I really enjoyed drinking this and in my opinion this is a lot better than your average ruby.