2018 W & J Graham's Quinta dos Malvedos Vintage Port

50% Touriga Franca, 30% Touriga Nacional, 10% Sousão, 10% Alicante Bouschet. Extensive 150-ha quinta with most vineyards facing south but some facing east, west and north. The Symingtons have owned this from the end of the 19th century too, like Senhora da Ribeira. Charles Symington is particularly thrilled by the quality of the Touriga Franca grown here, and 2018 was apparently a particurlarly good year for Touriga Franca. Cask sample. Putty nose with real energy. Wow! Round, relatively supple fruit with lots of breadth and sweetness. Really rather sumptuous though it finishes with more than a pinch of dry tannins. Still quite youthful overall, despite the sweet start. Peppery finish. (JR)

The 2018 Quinta dos Malvedos comes from a vineyard that contains top-notch Touriga Franca that Symington's believe performed particularly well in this vintage. It contains some of the fruit that occasionally goes into the "Stone Terraces" cuvée. It has a lush bouquet with black cherries, ash, cloves and a touch of autumn bonfire and is well defined, tempting kirsch scents that emerge with aeration. The palate is silky smooth on the entry, very harmonious with a sweet core of black fruit laced with white, Valrhona chocolate and cracked black pepper, lively but very cohesive on the sweet seductive finish. Great length - this is a very impressive Malvedos.

The 2018 Quinta dos Malvedos Vintage Port, a single quinta, is mostly a 50/30 blend of Touriga Franca and Touriga Nacional, with the rest evenly divided between Alicante Bouschet and Sousão. It comes in with 114 grams per liter of residual sugar. There is no Stone Terraces this year, so that dollop of fruit is incorporated here. Round and fragrant on opening, with a touch of eucalyptus on the nose and a cocoa-laced finish, this has a harder edge and more obvious concentration after aeration. It's reasonably deep—at least for this group of 2018s—with just enough concentration to soak up the power. More importantly, it has broad and classic flavors. Its character is its selling point more than any abstract discussions of concentration or structure. Fans of Graham's won't be disappointed. It expresses Malvedos well. This wasn't my favorite of the offerings, but its character made me at least put it in the top half of the these Symington 2018s. It will have plenty of time to come around, since this is one of the Symington Family Ports that will be released much later (probably seven to 10 years from vintage date). There were 8,600 cases produced.