Vintage Chart for Colheita?

[LOUISSS J]

For Vintage Ports we are able to say that one year gave fine Ports or another gave dense and concentrated Ports. Some years are considered ordinary while others are classics.
What about the Colheitas? Can we get an idea of their quality based on the quality from the vintages? From the little that I know it seems to me that the quality of a colheita depends on what the house was able to give according to a year without being able to make generalizations for all the producers of Porto for a given year (as we can do for Vintages )...

[Frederick Blais]

I feel for Colheita it would be hard to define.

It is easy to define a year that was generally qualitative for Vintage Port. But what you need for great Colheita can be found in almost any harvest. You basically don't want to start with a wine that has the structure of Vintage Port and then you have to work properly in the cellar.

[LOUISSS J]

Merci

[Andy Velebil]

I feel for Colheita it would be hard to define.

It is easy to define a year that was generally qualitative for Vintage Port. But what you need for great Colheita can be found in almost any harvest. You basically don't want to start with a wine that has the structure of Vintage Port and then you have to work properly in the cellar.

Agree. It's almost impossible to have a Colheita chart.

[Roy Hersh]

100% agree with Frederick and Andy. It would be futile. There may be a few universally great vintages, but in the vast majority of years, it is producer by producer situation when it comes to quality ... or not.

[Al B.]

While I agree that creating a vintage chart for Colheitas might be an exercise in futility, that’s no reason for us not to!

So to start off the debate, here’s some thoughts from me on where a particular vintage might sit based on my (very limited) colheita drinking experience.

Grade A
1937 - I don’t think I’ve ever had a bad 1937 colheita
1968 - the Noval 1968 was better than the Noval 1937!

Grade B
1966 - Kopke is wonderful
1992 - Quevedo made some fabulous colheitas in the 1990s
1994 - Quevedo again
2003

Grade C
2004 - nice, but will be better

Grade D
2002 - very aggressive and acidic

[Eric Menchen]

So to start off the debate ...
1968 - the Noval 1968 was better than the Noval 1937!

I really enjoyed 1968 Noval, but I've had a lot of other colheitas that I've liked more. I've had mixed results with 1968 Krohn. Andresen was pretty good, and Quevedo was too, but I think I preferred 1971 Quevedo more.

1952 and 1957 are years that come to mind to me for having multiple producers with some good bottles. 1941 Kopke is good, but I've not had other brands from that year.

[Glenn E.]

Honestly, 1937 and 1968 are the only 2 vintages that come to mind where I can name more than say 2 or 3 different Colheitas that I've had. And 1968 barely qualifies with 4 (the same as Eric listed).

I believe that I've had 9 different 1937s, so that I guess qualifies as a "vintage" for Colheita, but it's generally as others have already said - it's not so much the vintage as the producer that makes a great Colheita.

Which brings to mind this quote:

"Ruby is made by the hand of God and the feet of men.
Tawny is near God by the hand of Man"
-- Miguel Braga

The point being that Ruby Port, or more specifically Vintage Port, is dependent on nature - the hand of God - to provide the bounty, whereas Tawny Port is crafted by the hand of man.