Van Zellers & Co Late Bottled Vintage Port 2015
-
Wine
Enthusiast -
Robert
Parker
Product Details
Your Rating
Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
-
Wine Enthusiast
This is a finely poised wine, balancing the rich, dried fruit flavors along with a structure that should allow this Port to age. The balance extends to the harmony between the sweet fruit and the dry tannins. This wine can be drunk now but will be better from 2023.
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2015 Late Bottled Vintage Port is a field blend with 94 grams of residual sugar. A terrific traditional LBV, this is concentrated, with essence-of-fruit flavor showing. It has notable tannins too, even though it is accessible right now. On opening, it seemed softer, but aeration turned it rather intense. A couple of days later, it was quite powerful for an LBV. It is very capable of aging well, perhaps better than indicated. The fruit makes this terrific, though. It is ripe, expressive and delicious, with a touch of austerity and promises of complexity to come. This is a pretty wonderful and serious LBV.
Other Vintages
2016-
Robert
Parker
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.