For The Love Of Port

I've tasted two now and both have been phenominal. So now I want to expand my 3 bottle collection and I have a lot of questions about buying and serving this type of port. Here's a bunch of common questions I have:

• --When buying Colheita, how important is the vintage? Are 1977 Colheitas going to be better that 1978 colheitas? Or just more plentiful?
  --If you buy a colheita in a store, you can often see the bottling date and thereby know how long it was aged in wood. Can't do that on the net, and most internet retailers don't tell you that. How would you find out then?
  --Does a colheita that is aged longer in wood make a better wine? (i.e. does the above question matter?)
  --Are all colheitas filtered? If no do some of them age in bottles?
  --Is the reason why older colheitas cost more due to the limited availability or because they are better in some other way? (Therefore a philosophy of buying recently released colheitas pays over time...)
  --When serving, do colheitas need to be decanted? Are they supposed to be served slightly chilled?

The colheita port is a recent phenomenon in the US, and there's not too much published on them. I'm pretty familiar with tawnys, which have similar properties to each other at the 20, 30, and 40+ years of age. But colheitas seem to be much more of a wildcard.

Hope this wasn't too many questions in one go.

Thanks!
--A

Hey Alec, you rose many good questions. I'm gonna try to answer to many as possible:

--When buying Colheita, how important is the vintage? Are 1977 Colheitas going to be better that 1978 colheitas? Or just more plentiful?

The vintage is not very important because you can't generalize on the quality of one vintage for every producer. It depends much more on the quality of the grapes de producer choose to make colheitas. You can't say I'm going to buy a lot of 1977 colheita because it was a good year for vintage port.

--If you buy a colheita in a store, you can often see the bottling date and thereby know how long it was aged in wood. Can't do that on the net, and most internet retailers don't tell you that. How would you find out then?

The best way is always to be there and take the bottle in your hand, if you can't lets hope the clerk can assists you.

--Does a colheita that is aged longer in wood make a better wine? (i.e. does the above question matter?)

Not exactly, it depends of the quality of the grapes the colheita was produced with. The Barros 1977 that I've tasted many times and found always great what offering much less recently with the latest release. Not all Port can age all their life and get better in the cask. It also depends of your taste.

--Are all colheitas filtered? If no do some of them age in bottles?

All colheita are filtered, but some do age in bottle, as mentionned in other threads, but they do not change as drasticly as VP does because the wine is already much more oxydised.

--Is the reason why older colheitas cost more due to the limited availability or because they are better in some other way? (Therefore a philosophy of buying recently released colheitas pays over time...)

The cost of storing the wine for all these years is also part of the equation, but of course, with time and release, far less wine is available in the lodges, then limited availability and quality always push the prices up.

--When serving, do colheitas need to be decanted? Are they supposed to be served slightly chilled?

No need to decant, I like to serve them slightly chill to make it refreshing.

Always remember that colheita are not a blend from many years as they do with aged tawnys. Hence it's forcing the producer to pick great quality grapes and to pay attention to the wine during all its years. Unlike with tawny, you can't correct flaw in the wine to make an aged blend. Colheita is the Vintage of tawny and is also produced in small quantity, around 3% of the harvest will go into colheitas Port.

Thanks Fred! So then it seems that choosing a Colheita can only be based on the experience of having tasted it first. In other words, you can't say, "1977 was a good year, and this colheita was aged for 12 years in wood, and Kopke is a well known company so therefore the 1977 Kopke colheita is going to be good." Instead, you have to purchase by "Hmm, I liked the 1968 Krohn, I'll try the 1977 and see if it's any good."

That's got to make purchasing this stuff difficult.

Has anyone had a bad colheita?

--A

Alec I had a Krohn 85 bottled in 98 which was ok but nothing to shout about.I have another five bottles to get through so maybe that was a one off,but for $16 a bottle I can't grumble.

Sorry, this probably should have been posted in the Port Basics forum. Keep forgetting there's other forums here.....

Simon, thanks for the heads up on the '85 Krohn. I'd have thought that a company that invests so much in colheitas wouldn't have distributed something mediocre. But you're right, the price isn't bad....

--A

I find that, assuming you haven't tasted it before, price is the best indicator of the quality of Colheita. I have recently had the Krohn 1965 and the 1985. The 65 was fantastic and the 85 was only just drinkable. The 65 cost me £60 a bottle and the 85 cost £9.

I also had a Feist 1965 last week which cost £20 - less that one third of the Krohn from the same year. It wasn't in the same league.

Derek

I had a Burmester 96 colheita last week and it was as I expected a good all round port nothing fancy but a lovely port my experiance with colheitas is limited as I always drink vintage but a nice experiance.I also had an osborne 20 year old bottled in 71 but it was dead.Not a huge disapointment but half expected.