For The Love Of Port

Guimaraens - the second - the other vintage port from Fonseca. When the vintage is not quite there. But did you know, that a Guimaraens single quinta vintage port was produced in 1978 and 1982 (Quinta do Cruzeiro). I had the 1982 this weekend - just great. Just love to drink rare ports.

The 78 and 82 are strange ones - we had these at a Fonseca / Guimaraens vertical last year and - despite "Quinta de Cruzeiro" branding on both corks and bottles [edit - on reflection, only on corks i think] - Adrian Bridge seemed to suggest that these were not, in fact, single quinta....

I recall thinking this was strange on the evening....maybe one of the others present could confirm whether i was mistaken....(Adrian had his laptop with detailed records of each port at the tasting, so i don't think this was an off-the-cuff remark. I might have misheard.).

Rob - indeed quite strange. Could we somehow get Adrian to confirm - or the opposit - that statement?

Rob C. wrote:The 78 and 82 are strange ones - we had these at a Fonseca / Guimaraens vertical last year and - despite "Quinta de Cruzeiro" branding on both corks and bottles [edit - on reflection, only on corks i think]

I know for sure that there are also bottles of 82 that are labeled as "Quinta de Cruzeiro" on the bottle, so maybe there were two bottlings those years, both Cruzeiro and Guimaraens?

mm the 78 fonseca says guimareans on my label

Two bottlings...or two releases of the same bottling under different labels! The 78s i've seen (e.g.: here) were clearly not released in 1980/1981.

All i recall is that Adrian dismissed our suggestion that this was an SQVP (despite pointing out the cork). Neither is there mention of it on Fonseca's own list of declared vintages. Could be an undeclared one...?

But i had drunk through my way a pretty complete line-up starting at 1933 by that stage!

Rob C. wrote:The 78 and 82 are strange ones - we had these at a Fonseca / Guimaraens vertical last year and - despite "Quinta de Cruzeiro" branding on both corks and bottles [edit - on reflection, only on corks i think] - Adrian Bridge seemed to suggest that these were not, in fact, single quinta....

I recall thinking this was strange on the evening....maybe one of the others present could confirm whether i was mistaken....(Adrian had his laptop with detailed records of each port at the tasting, so i don't think this was an off-the-cuff remark. I might have misheard.).

I do recall the discussion, or most of it, regarding these bottles and the branded corks (just the corks had Quinta d. Cruzeiro on them). Adrian stated they were not SQVP's despite the corks. I would really like to find out the reason behind the use of the Single Quinta branded corks.

Rob C. wrote:Two bottlings...or two releases of the same bottling under different labels! The 78s i've seen (e.g.: here) were clearly not released in 1980/1981.

All i recall is that Adrian dismissed our suggestion that this was an SQVP (despite pointing out the cork). Neither is there mention of it on Fonseca's own list of declared vintages. Could be an undeclared one...?

But i had drunk through my way a pretty complete line-up starting at 1933 by that stage!

I don't know what Fonseca's idea with it was, or if it was officially declared or not, all I know is that there is/was a 1982 port they labeled Quinta de Cruzeiro. I tasted it back in 2006, side by side with Taylor's Terra Feita of the same vintage. You can find my notes here. I don't have any pictures to back up my story, but we specifically paired Cruzeiro and Terra Feita that night to see how neighbouring vineyards of the same vintage would compare. We wouldn't (and couldn't) have done that if Cruzeiro was only branded on the cork, because we wouldn't have known.

The 1982 says "Guimaraens" as well as "Qt. do Cruzeiro" on the label. It is quite odd, but "Fonseca" is not mentioned! The cork spells "1982 Cruzeiro". I do believe we still have the bottle and the cork - is a picture needed?

We shared a bottle of FG78 in London last week. Although this was labelled as Fonseca Guimaraens 1978, the cork was clearly branded Fonseca Cruzeiro 1978.

I bought a case of Fonseca Cruzeiro '82 a few years ago - no mention of Guimaraens on the case.

To date, I've never got round to prising it open, so I don't know what the labels say..