Fonseca
Vintage Port
2000

The producer

Founded in 1822 when Manuel Pedro Guimaerens acquired control of the Fonseca estate, and as a condition of the sale insisted his name was retained. The property now comprises just over 76 hectares of which 44 are vineyards, and all grapes are food trodden in traditional stone troughs, called lagares, on the estate. Much of the fruit for the Vintage Ports comes from Fonseca’s Quinta do Panascal, purchased in 1978, and Quinta do Val dos Muros, purchased in 1985.

The wine

Fonseca’s Vintage Ports represent the finest grape material and know-how of a given year and is sourced from Fonseca’s own estates, Cruzeiro and Santo Antonio in the Pinhao Valley and the Tavora Valley estate at Panascal. These, Fonseca’s flagship wines, consistently achieve great scores from the world’s leading wine critics and, while giving opulent luscious fruit concentration while young, can easily age for up to 100 years.

We choose our wines based on a range of criteria (see how we choose our wines) of which critic scores is just one. Rather than simply highlight the best score to promote a wine, our average critic score is calculated from the scores provided by several respected wine critics, who we follow for specific regions. They do not represent all critic scores and, wherever possible, we try and give more weight to more recent reviews. Where appropriate we consider market-based scores like Global Wine Score or Wine Searcher Average scores.

As a rule, we look to offer wines that achieve a 92/100 average critic score or better and frankly a lot of very good wines simply don’t make the cut. As a high-end provider we want to reflect that positioning in the quality of wines we offer. Such wines are only a tiny fraction of those generally on offer in the market. We believe that an average score is a more conservative and representative approach, but it is still subjective and only offered as a a guide to our customers.