The fruit for Croft 10 Year Old Tawny Porto is sourced in the traditional way, from the highest-quality individual growers in the Douro Valley, where the varying altitude and aspect of the vineyards creates the potential for a complex wine of great character. In the winery, the newly developed, robotic “Port Toes” technology for treading allows the winery to maximize the quality of the fruit by mimicking the gentle action of human feet during traditional foot treading, which does not pulverize the skins or break the pips, avoiding the release of bitter tannins into the juice. Fermentation is halted by the addition of grape spirits before all the residual sugar has been fermented, creating a sweet, fortified wine. The 10 Year Old is a blend of wines, selected from Croft’s considerable stocks, that have been aged for an average of 10 years in neutral oak casks.
With an attractive, tawny color and amber rim, this wine shows full, complex aromas of mellow spices along with walnut, butterscotch and fine oak notes against a background of rich, jammy fruit. On the palate, the wine is silky and round, full of ripe fig flavors.