Some people may enjoy this wine's rather fat, rich and powerful fruit now, but I still find it too young for drinking. Deeply colored, with smoky mint, tar and fruit aromas, full-bodied, with concentrated fruit flavors and plenty of tannins.

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What a great way to end our visit to Vargellas and a noble gesture by Alistair and Gillyane! This is one of my all-time favorite 1970 VPs and this bottle exemplifies the greatness of the vintage and Fonseca. The funny thing is, I believe that this bottling has upside potential and will be even better in and around 2015-2020 when it really shows more mature, secondary nuances. Then again, I see no reason that it won’t be a stunning wine in 2050, so you decide at what stage you’d like to enjoy this one. Today, it was an unctuous, intense and complex Vintage Port showing its beauty and hedonistic style. Load up the cellar with all that you can find and afford! I am looking forward to start drinking the majority of my bottles circa 2025 and I’ll leave a few for my daughter Taylor to enjoy too.

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Fonseca is one of the great port lodges, producing the most exotic and most complex port. If Fonseca lacks the sheer weight and power of a Taylor, Dow or Warre, or the opulent sweetness and intensity of a Graham, it excels in its magnificently complex, intense bouquet of plummy, cedary, spicy fruit and long, broad, expansive flavors. With its lush, seductive character, one might call it the Pomerol of Vintage ports. When it is young, it often loses out in blind tastings to the heavier, weightier, more tannic wines, but I always find myself upgrading my opinion of Fonseca after it has had 7-10 years of age. The 1970, of course, is a powerful Fonseca with an exotic bouquet and lush, creamy, multidimensional flavors.

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ripe cherry in the most beautiful wrapper ... one of the best ports I have had in a while...