1979 Wine and Port Vintage
Vintage Summary and Recommendations: 
Welcome to Vintage Wine and Port's 1979 wine page. Read on for our summary of the 1979 vintage, our top recommendations and region reports. Scroll down to see all of our wines currently available. If you cannot find what you are looking for please call us on 01425 837177 or Contact Us. We would love to help you with your wine choice!
1979 was a year of mostly average-to-good wine produced throughout the world, with a few truly stand-out regions. Bordeaux suffered a large, overly tannic vintage but there still might be one or two surprises lurking there – you will have to look hard for them though. Burgundy, however, was a different story and enjoyed a good vintage. Champagne and Alsace were both good but the real star for France was the Rhône. For Italy, the wines of Tuscany were the best. The Port vintage was generally good, despite not many producers declaring, and there are almost guaranteed to be some good LBV wines drinking well. Any of these wines would make a fabulous 47 year old wine gift for an Anniversary or birthday.
Our Wine Expert currently recommends the following wines for this year:
This Year in History: Fun Fact: Board game Trivial Pursuit is launched.
Eurovision Winner: Israel with the song "Hallelujah" by Milk and Honey
Born in this Year: Jonny Wilkinson, Rugby Player, English rugby star who played fly-half for Toulon and England's national team. He wrote about the Six Nations tournaments and Rugby World Cups for The Times in 2011. He helped England win the Rugby World Cup in 2003.
Top Grossing Movie: Moonraker
Bordeaux: Initially overlooked in preference to the 1978 Vintage, 1979 was one of the very few cool years that produced a good vintage for Bordeaux. The wines were initially very tannic and acidic but after four decades of cellaring the wines have matured nicely and are now at their peak. They will remain so for years to come.
Italian: 1979 is a very good wine vintage. Good growing conditions particularly in Tuscany and Piedmont produced rich, full bodied wines.
Portugal: A Vintage Port from 1979 makes an excellent 44 year old wine gift for a 44th birthday or anniversary. Still drinking well, 1979 ports are part of a span of good vintages from 1977 to 1980. A very wet winter was followed by a dry hot summer and no rainfall from late June until 18th September. The crop was large and produced many quite good straight forward single-quinta wines that are now mature but will keep well for years.
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28 products found.
Dow's, 1979
Quinta do Bomfim Vintage Port
One of the Douro Valley’s finest vineyards, Bomfim is the heart of some of the company’s greatest Ports, having provided wines for Dow’s Vintage Ports ever since it was acquired in 1896. The estate is situated in the centre of the best wine-producing area known as the ‘Cima Corgo’, which offers an ideal balance between the relatively wet ‘Baixo Corgo’ to the west and the intense heat of the ‘Douro Superior’ to the east. In the good year’s when Dow’s does not ‘declare’ a Vintage, the best Ports of Quinta do Bomfim are carefully selected and bottled as Dow’s Quinta do Bomfim Vintage Port. These wines are exceptionally good. …
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Price: £159.00
Stock: Out of Stock
Frei Joao, 1979
Frei Joao - Reserva, Bairrada - MAGNUM
Caves S. Joao, established in 1920, became a dominant force in Portuguese wine making in the early 20th century with their houses Porta dos Cavaleiros in Dao and Frei Joao in Bairrada. Given the shifting trends in consumer preferences, Bairrada and Dao fell to obscurity in the 1990s when critical influence drove the demand for bigger, extracted, warmer climate wines. As in all things, however, what comes around goes around! Sure enough, 20 years later savvy consumers and food-conscious sommeliers are looking for finesse and freshness and heading back to Bairrada and Dao. Wines that when young had a vegetal character, …
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Price: £149.00
Stock: Out of Stock
Graham's Port, 1979
Malvedos Single Quinta Vintage Port
The 1979 Graham's Malvedos port is less mature than previous tastings. The port is medium ruby about 40% opacity, Pleasant tannins on the mouth, good body, notes of cherries and liquorice with a good long finish.
20% ABV 1.5L
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Price: £179.00
Stock: Out of Stock