Multi-layered – Martha’s Colheita Port


© monica749 Pixabay

Many wine drinkers know Vintage Port, whereas Colheita is largely unknown, and only few know which port wine style it is. Its brownish color identifies it as a Tawny type port and since the Portuguese word Colheita means harvest, a Colheita Port is a Tawny that comes from the grapes of a single vintage. A Vintage Tawny, so to speak, just like the Ruby typ Vintage port from a single vintage. But while the dark to black-red port wines of the Ruby type are aged in large barrels with little contact with atmospheric oxygen, the mostly amber to mahogany-colored

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Port Wine – Traditional Late Bottled Vintage

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© Quinta do Vale Dona Maria

Chocolate desserts are usually accompanied by red dessert wines, with us being mostly red Vin Doux Naturel from France. Sometimes a change might be fine, so we have chosen as a companion to a chocolate chili mousse a vintage port wine. These show up the name vintage and are vinified from grapes of a vintage. Three are types of it: Vintage, Single Quinta Vintage and Late Bottled Vintage, abbreviated LBV. Vintage is produced only in very good years, must be registered by the producer at the Port Wine Institute (IVDP) and confirmed after organoleptic tasting to be vintage-worthy. Single Quinta Vintage is produced in good years, but does not require registration and acceptance at the IVDP. However, both wines in principle undergo the same vinification and he same aging, 2 years in barrels followed by bottling and maturing. Entirely different the Late Bottled Vintage, which usually matures for 4-6 years in the

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Tawny Port from 4 decades

Portweinverkostung Tawny Jewels Prowein 2015

The Insituto dos Vinhos do Douro e Porto (IVDP) conducted several port wine tastings at Prowein fair 2015. Port wine expert Axel Probst, member of the Brotherhood Confraria do Vinho do Porto, moderated the tasting, labeled Port Wine Treasures from 4 Decades, in which, with the exception of a Fine White Port, he presented matured Tawny or Colheita, i.e. barrel-matured Tawny Ports from one harvest year.

For all longer matured Tawny, as well as for the Colheita, a maturation period of at least seven years in large wooden barrels (pipas) is required, but many of these wines are matured longer. Years of contact with the … Read more ...