1.

What is Vintage Port?

A Vintage Port is a wine from a single year — or ‘vintage’ — bottled without filtration after spending around two years in cask.

It continues to age slowly in the bottle, over a period of 10–20 years, before it is considered ready to drink. Correctly stored, the best wines will keep and develop in their bottles for a century or more.

Like Champagne, only wine from grapes grown and processed in the Douro Valley, Portugal, can be labelled ‘Port’. Before release, it must be approved by the Douro and Port Wine Institute.

2.

What makes Vintage Port so special?

The skill in making a great Vintage Port comes from blending small ‘lotes’ — or parcels of wine — from the very best grapes picked at optimum ripeness after an outstanding growing season.

These often come from plots of old, deep-rooted, interplanted vines and, more recently, from leading grape varieties like Touriga Franca, Touriga Nacional, Tinto Cão and Sousão growing on the best slopes. The grapes need to be well-worked during vinification (either foot trodden in stone tanks, known as ‘lagares’, or subject to carefully controlled piston or robotic treading) to extract as much colour and flavour as possible before the fermentation is arrested with fortifying spirit.

Declaring a vintage

After the harvest, these wines are kept aside and monitored as a potential ‘vintage’. If the producer or ‘shipper’ is convinced that the wine is of exceptional quality, a vintage will be ‘declared’. This is not a decision that is taken lightly and, while there is no law about the regularity of a Port vintage declaration, on average there have been no more than three declarations in a decade.  

Split vintage

There is usually a consensus among leading Port shippers but occasionally, when they fail to agree, there comes a so-called ‘split vintage’. In between classic declarations, a shipper may opt to bottle a Single Quinta Vintage Port, a wine from a single estate that is made in just the same way but is generally ready to drink rather earlier than a ‘classic’ vintage — say, after 10 years rather than 20 more. 

The amount of wine declared is, by definition, limited. Vintage Port accounts for no more than two per cent of the total amount of Port produced. A major shipper will typically declare up to 10,000 cases depending on the year and circumstances. Sometimes the quantity declared is much less and may be just a few hundred cases. These are the ultimate collector’s wines.  

3.

Which Vintage Port shippers are best known?

Vintage Port was traditionally the preserve of the so-called ‘British’ shippers, who made them their flagship wines — with the so called ‘Portuguese’ houses staking their claim with Colheita Port and Tawny Port. More recently, this distinction has become blurred. Many shippers have built (and occasionally destroyed) their international reputation on the back of their Vintage Port.

The current names to be reckoned with are Cockburn, Croft, Dow, Fonseca, Graham, Sandeman, Taylor and Warre. But look out for wines from Ferreira, Niepoort, Ramos Pinto and Quinta do Noval, all capable of making outstanding wines.

The latter — Quinta do Noval, an immaculate single estate — has declared every year for the past decade and produces the fantastically rare Noval Nacional, a wine made from a single plot of ungrafted wines at the heart of the estate. Other shippers have been following suit with their own site-specific Vintage Ports bottled and declared in tiny quantities (for example, Taylor’s Quinta de Vargellas, Vinha Velha, Graham’s The Stone Terraces).     

4.

What years should I look out for in Vintage Port?

The last decade or so has been exceptionally kind to the vineyards of the Douro region. There were classic Port declarations in 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016 and 2015 as well as 2011. For the first time in history, Taylor (one of the most respected names in Vintage Port) declared three years in a row (2018, 2017, 2016). Going back a decade, 2009, 2007, 2003 and 2000 were all declared years with the latter just about ready to drink.

Since the early 2000s, a dramatic improvement in the quality of the fortifying spirit — which, it is easy to forget, makes up 20% of finished wine — may well have changed the flavour profile of Vintage Port. The spirit now used to fortify vintage has a much cleaner and more vinous character than the spirit used in the past. Certainly, recently declared vintages, like 2007 and 2011, are notable for the purity and clear expression of fruit, even at an early stage.

Rather like the seven ages of man, Vintage Port tends to enjoy a short, fragrant bloom of youth before it shuts down and goes through a period of surly adolescence. Then it slowly emerges as an adult gaining gravitas until it reaches its peak, flowering as an adult usually between 20 and 40 years of age. For wines that are now acting as mature adults — and therefore drinking well — you need to go back to 1997, 1994, 1992/91 (a split vintage), 1985, 1983, 1980, 1977, 1970, 1966 and 1963. That completes the list of what I term the modern vintages for Port.

For the finest years, the peak becomes a long plateau and old age may not be reached for 80 years or more. Anyone born in 1970, 1966, 1963, 1955, 1948, 1945, 1935, 1931 and 1927 has a wine that will accompany them for life (and longer).

Among recent years, I suggest that 2011 (and possibly 2017) will become similar lifelong classics for Vintage Port lovers.    

5.

Vintage Port on the Market

Vintage Port is generally offered en primeur (before they are released in bottle) soon after declaration, usually 18 months or so after the harvest. Thereafter, the price climbs slowly and steadily until shortly before the wine is ready to drink, when it jumps to reflect its impending drinkability.

Some years will command a premium due to their perceived overall quality. Recent highlights at Bonhams include four bottles of Taylor 1945 which sold for £2,684 including premium, three bottles of Graham 1948 for £1,586 including premium, and six bottles of Quinta do Noval 1955 for £1,708 including premium.

Given its limited production, Vintage Port is still something of a bargain — certainly when compared to the secondary market for Bordeaux and Burgundy.

Richard Mayson chairs the Port and Madeira panel at the Decanter World Wine Awards. He is author of Port and the Douro published by Infinite Ideas Classic Wine Library.  

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