Dow’s Fine Tawny is a three-year-old blend aged in small oak casks at our lodges in Vila Nova de Gaia. Dow’s Tawny combines subtle fruit with delicious velvety nutty flavours derived from the cask ageing. This fact makes the blender’s job more difficult and demanding but the wine that is finally bottled is superb and is the reason why Dow’s Old Tawny Ports regularly win the top awards around the world for their unique style and quality.

It is rare to see such tremendous depth and intensity in colour as this wine displays The freshness of the floral aromas is very attractive with a dominance of rockrose, a flower that grows wild around the hills of Senhora da Ribeira. This Vintage Port boasts a deep and intense ruby color, with aromas of berries, chocolate and spicy notes. When young, Bomfim wines are purple-black, austere, complex and intensely concentrated; they are characterised by very fine peppery tannins. Please note, whilst the majority of parcels sent on this service are received next day, this is not guaranteed.

Bomfim is a classic ‘River Quinta’ with several natural advantages: it is south-facing ensuring ideal exposure to the sun; its stony schist soil affords excellent drainage, allowing water to reach the vine’s deep roots; the annual average rainfall is near perfect at 800mm; the altitude ranges from 120 to 340 metres above sea level. Racking is the process by which the Dow’s team of experienced lodge men will carefully draw the wine off its ‘lees’ (the natural sediment that is formed at the bottom of the cask) and then pour the wine back into the clean cask. Prunes and plums combine with tea and spice notes in this fully mature wine, with subtle hints of maple sugar and anise coming up on the finish.

The wines from Senhora da Ribeira are among the finest in the Douro and complement the wines from Bomfim in the composition of the Dow’s classic Vintage Ports.

The wines of the bountiful 1985 vintage have a great balance of power with sweetness and are drinking now. The result was the Symington ‘robotic lagar’, an automated treading machine which exactly replicates the gentle action of the human foot and which has revolutionised winemaking in the Douro Valley. All of the property is A-rated, and virtually the entire Quinta is now planted in varietal blocks, allowing each variety to be picked and vinified separately.

Colours of the musts in the fermentation tanks are always purple-black due to the very high skin to juice ratio. On the palate, Dow’s Twenty Years Old Tawny is perfectly balanced, with notes of dried nuts and spice. Bomfim is regarded as one of the Duoro Valley's best vineyards and has been a staple of Dow's Vintage Port since the nineteenth century.

A superb port from a top, top vintage which has certainly continued to improve over the last forty nine years. Over the centuries, the Dow winemakers have evolved a style that suits the house’s key vineyards; fermentations are a little longer, resulting in a drier Port Wine that has become the hallmark of Dow’s. The very hot climate through the summer at this vineyard results in highly complex and concentrated wines but very low yields.