For The Love Of Port

From Rozes. Located at the extreme eastern edge of the Douro Superior, the port from this Quinta is intended to be consumed young.

Very young colour, still showing some purple. Lavender perfume and blueberry on the nose. Big impact, sweet and fruity. Good tannic components, great levels of fruit but modest levels of acidity. Terrific impact on the aftertaste and a good length of flavoursome dry cherries and chocolate. 89/100. Tasted 19 April 2010.

I had the pleasure of tasting this wine along with many others with Alex and Julian D. A. Wiseman at The Big Fortified Tasting in London last week. This was an interesting wine and I will look out and post my tasting note when I get home.

Much to the annoyance of our pedantic friend, Julian, the label displays the name of this wine as "GriFo". The people behind the stand seemed quite surprised and I have to say a little bemused at the intensity of Julian's objection to tHe inapRopRiate capitaLisation iN tHe miDdle oF wHat iS quiTe obviOusly oNe woRd.

Never heard of GriFo before, so there's a first time for everything.

Roy Hersh wrote:Never heard of GriFo before, so there's a first time for everything.

Same here.

Alex,
Do you have any information on them?

I have emailed the lady who was displaying this wine at the tasting and will post more information when I get a reply. My notebook says "there is a 2007".

They like to use that middle capital F for the Terras, as seen in the Douro wine on the left, but for the middle bottle I would have expected it to be bigger to match the first letter, so consistency doesn't seem to be too important.

BTW, Grifo is Portuguese for Griffon. I assume it isn't the breed of dog, but the "Griffon Vulture, an Old World vulture in the family Accipitridae, which also includes eagles, kites, buzzards and hawks." (Cribbed from Wikipedia)

Which explains the bird's-head graphic on the label. Or vice versa. About the only place it is found in Portugal is the extreme upper Douro valley, near the boundary with Spain.