Fonseca Guimaraens 2008 Vintage Port 

Ripe raspberry and cherry jam aromas, with lovely aromatic dimension. Vibrant berry fruit flavours. Plump, rounded tannins giving good weight and texture. Finish with lots of flavour and length. 

Each year the finest wines produced at the vintage are selected. If, after two years in wood, those from a particular harvest are judged to be above average in quality, the best may be blended together and bottled as a Fonseca or a Guimaraens Vintage Port. 

Fonseca Vintage Port is made only in the classic vintage years which produce wines of outstanding concentration and longevity. Guimaraens Vintage ports come from the best of the intervening years and will normally mature earlier. Vintage port is aged in bottle and should be stored horizontally with the label uppermost. With time, it forms a natural deposit or crust in the bottle and therefore requires decanting. 

"The 2008 Guimaraens Vintage Port is not a re-release; it has been in the marketplace, but it is a new submission for us. It comes in with 97.4 grams of sugar and 20.3% alcohol. This is pretty intense. Tight and tannic still, this is a very focused Port with fine intensity of flavor and powerful aromatics. There's a bit of cistus up front for the aromatics and a bit of a crisp edge on the finish. The fruit is certainly ripe, though, even though the mid-palate is elegant. This intense 2008 is not ready. For all of the trend toward drinking Port young, I'd say this needs around 10 more years in the cellar, depending on how you like them. (Then, if you really want complexity, you might wait until 2035 or beyond.) All that said, it drank pretty well when I tried it again 24 hours later. This is a fine selection for the cellar at a pretty nice price for a Port that is already 10 years into its aging curve."

93/100 points, Mark Squires, Wine Advocate, April 2018