Vintage Port: What are they?

We hear a lot about "That is very Vintage.." "This is Vintage..." but what does Vintage really means and more exactly what is its relation with Port Wine.

Vintage

Well, to begin with, Vintage means that something is classic, old although with extremely good quality. People start to consider something vintage when this object has more than 20 years.

There are two types of "Vintage":

  • 80's and 90's objets are considered to be the "The new Vintage";
  • Objets with al least 50 years are the "True Vintage";
  • Objets with more than 100 years are just antiques;

Vintage Port

Vintage Ports are incredibly hard to find as usually they are just 3% of any year's prodution. Besides that these wines aren't "declared" very often so that makes these wines even more hard to find, however when we found them we can taste one of the oldest and marvelous things on Earth.

Vintage Ports aren't simply wines made from a single year's harvest, if they were treated like that they would be totally diferent class of wine. Although its correct to say that they are wines made form a special harvest, there is more behind its production and that's the aging method used on this wines. To begin with, Vintage Ports don't spend more than two years inside the barrel before being bottled. And why is that? Well, these types of wine have a very odd feature: they age incredibly faster inside the barrel and very slowly inside a bottle and for a Vintage Port to reach its superb best it must age very slowly.

Bottling Vinage Ports isn't also a simply thing. Contrary to many other Ports, these wines must be bottled all together, in other words, nothing from the wine is wasted, even the lees. Lees are deposits of dead yeast in this case, they are grape skin residues. These lees in vintage Port are very helpfull because it helps the wines live and develop while inside thge bottle.


Some examples of Vintage Ports

 
Taylor Fladgate 2017 Vintage Port
 
This wine is one of the most wanted wines developed in 2017 after a very rainy 2016.
Most of  the people who evaluate this wine tend to give an average og 98 in 100 points so this just has one meaning: this is a very wonderfull Vintage Wine.










 
Dow's Vintage Port 2007

"The 2007 Dow's Vintage Port is one of the stars of the vintage. A glass-coating opaque purple color, it offers up an already complex bouquet of mineral, pencil lead, licorice, spice box, and assorted black fruits. On the palate it is quite massive, slightly dry in the house style, and packed with fruit. It has the structure to be one of the long distance runners of the vintage taking as much as 20 years to reach its peak and drinking well through 2050. As an aside, I was able to taste the individual components of this wine on the day prior to this tasting. The final blend is better than any of its parts." said the Wine Advocate-Parker the most trusted authority in wine for over 30 years.
 










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