🍷 Fonseca Guimaraens

Fonseca Guimaraens, known by the brand name Fonseca, is a Port house. According to the house, its earliest recorded Port trade dates from 8 April 1815, when the founder João dos Santos Fonseca bought 32 pipes; around 1820 he formed the partnership Fonseca & Monteiro. In 1822 Manoel Pedro Guimaraens left for England and in 1823 opened his first premises in London, and the Guimaraens family has been linked with the house ever since.

According to the house, its first Vintage Port dates from 1840. Its main wines today are Vintage Port, Bin 27 and Terra Prima, and its Douro estates are Quinta do Panascal, Quinta do Cruzeiro and Quinta de Santo António.

According to the house, the record of that first trade is held in the archives of the Real Companhia Velha, the company that held the monopoly of the port wine trade; its first documented sale followed on 14 September 1815 and its first shipment abroad in 1816. In 1820 Fonseca formed Fonseca & Monteiro with Francisco José Gomes Monteiro, and in 1821 its annual purchases reached 1,139 pipes. The house says Manoel Pedro Guimaraens was born in 1795 in São Romão da Ucha in northern Portugal, that his first London premises in 1823 were at Tokenhouse Yard, Lothbury, and that in 1825 he moved to 35 Abchurch Lane.

The house's website lists three Douro estates, Quinta do Panascal, Quinta de Santo António and Quinta do Cruzeiro, and cellars in Vila Nova de Gaia open to visitors. It divides its Ports into bottle-aged Vintage wines (Vintage Clássico, Guimaraens Vintage and Quinta do Panascal Vintage), cask-aged Tawnies of 10 and 20 years, and fuller styles such as Bin 27, LBV, the organic Terra Prima, Crusted and Ruby, plus the white Siroco. According to the house, Bin 27 was launched in Britain in 1972, and David Guimaraens, the sixth generation of the family, is its technical director of oenology.

Port is a wine with a protected designation of origin (PDO) from the Douro Demarcated Region. Grape spirit stops the fermentation, so at least 17.5 g/l of sugar remains; the strength is 19–22% vol.

Why it matters to you. Vintage is a category set by the rules, while names such as “Bin 27” are the house's own. The WHO reminds: there is no safe level of alcohol.