For The Love Of Port

I noticed two different bottle styles & labels and went to the website to see what I could find. What struck me is there are description sheets for each bottle style but the write ups are identical. 2008 was, as far as I could tell, perfectly alike whereas the 2011 the only difference was in aging (the regular bottle 5+ year; the fatter bottle is 2-3 years which seems to contradict the usual 4-6).

My question is as follows: In any given year are these the same wine, or slightly different?

Here's a link to the 2011 write up: http://www.quintadelarosa.com/sites/www ... 202011.pdf

and 2008: http://www.quintadelarosa.com/sites/www ... mbined.pdf

I am curious as well. I've seen the short fat clear bottle and was amazed to see such a young LBV and the packaging is odd for that type of Port. The latter of which I am not a fan of for most middle to upper end Ruby's.

I believe that it's just two different packages for the same product.

In reading through the 2 pdfs, it seems pretty clear to me that someone made a cut & paste error when creating the 2011 version. That pdf claims that the 2008 LBV was bottled in April, 2015... my guess is that they just forgot to change 2008 to 2011. The other pdf (the 2008 version) says that the 2008 LBV was bottled in 2012.

2-3 years of aging is not an LBV, so wherever you saw that about the fat bottle must be an error.

I've two different bottlings of 20 year old Krohn, one in a normal bottle and one in the squat, short bottle. Both bottled the same year. I'm wondering if this is done for different markets.

It just seems so odd not to not only have two bottle types, but to have different write-ups for them where the only difference is the bottle style. It would clear up a lot if they would just say same wine, or this one is filtered while the other one is not.....but it sure is confusing to figure out.

In an effort to clear this up, I have emailed the firm via their website. I'll report back any response.

John M. wrote:It just seems so odd not to not only have two bottle types, but to have different write-ups for them where the only difference is the bottle style. ...

Agreed. Is the squat bottle a 500ml? I note that the bottom right of the page shows it comes in 500 and 750ml bottles. I think it is a marketing ploy.

I got a response, the heart of which is as follows:

We just produce one type of LBV, no{t} filtered and at the moment we have the 75 cl, 50 cl and 37,5 cl bottle. You can find the tasting notes for the LBV on our website - http://www.quintadelarosa.com/content/l ... ntage-2011

I just bid an won a bottle on Wine Bid...it's the squat one and the description calls it 750 so I wonder if the skinnier one is 500. On the other hand, I just blew up the photos of bottles and the skinnier one's label says 75cl. Guess some mystery continues.

Rather nice to get a timely response, too.

Very good customer service on that quick reply especially during Harvest them. Wonder why the 500ml as making 3 bottling of the same seems an expensive undertaking when accounting for shipping different sizes to different people making 3 bottling runs etc.


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Quinta de la Rosa excels on the lower end of their port portfolio and their dry wines (especially Reserve) are very good. You are smart for going after their LBV vs their VP.

Moses Botbol wrote:Quinta de la Rosa excels on the lower end of their port portfolio and their dry wines (especially Reserve) are very good. You are smart for going after their LBV vs their VP.

Thanks for the tip---I've had early versions of LBVs several times plus their reserve ruby and my scores/notes are favorable. Only one VP--rated 91-92 but that was a few years ago.

The squat bottle is 500ml.

The regular shaped bottles are the 750ml and 375ml.

They do the 10 and 20 year old tawnies in the same squat 500ml bottle. I'm pretty sure the LBV in the 500ml bottles is sealed with a T-Stopper so not designed for ageing.
I asked Sophia Bergqvist about this on the 2013 harvest tour when we went there but she didn't elaborate too much on it other than saying that it was just two different versions of packaging. My guess is that they ran out of bottles when doing the LBV at one stage, and probably found that some of their customers preferred that packaging. I'd also expect that they make better margins on the 500 ml bottles as the 500s are never 2/3 of the price of what the 750ml bottles are.
We did a tasting of LBVs that say at the Quinta and went as far back as 1991. The 91 and 94 in particular were a revelation.

That was a really fun tasting!

Glenn E. wrote: 2-3 years of aging is not an LBV, so wherever you saw that about the fat bottle must be an error.

Agreed re; 2 years, but the window for producers to bottle LBV from the 2011 vintage runs from 1 July 2015 to 31 December 2017 (i think...), so someone bottling early in that window will be putting out a product that has had a little over 3.5 years of "ageing".

The spec sheet looks like it was pulled together in a hurry and had a couple of errors. i'd be surprised if the 2011 really was bottled in April 2015 (unless my understanding of IVDP rules is wrong) - though April sounds plausible as the date that samples were submitted to or approved by IVDP (which must be done between March 1 and September 30 in the fourth year after harvest)

Rob C. wrote:

Glenn E. wrote: 2-3 years of aging is not an LBV, so wherever you saw that about the fat bottle must be an error.

Agreed re; 2 years, but the window for producers to bottle LBV from the 2011 vintage runs from 1 July 2015 to 31 December 2017 (i think...), so someone bottling early in that window will be putting out a product that has had a little over 3.5 years of "ageing".

Well... grapes from the 2011 harvest were picked in late Sept/early Oct, so if they cannot be bottled until 1 July that's a minimum of 3.75 years of aging. Plus it will say "bottled in 2015" on the label, which looks like 4 years from 2011.

Vintage Port is technically 18-30 months, but we commonly say "2 years after harvest". For LBV we say "4-6 years after harvest" even though technically it's 3.75 - 6.25. (Note: I'm not certain on the technicalities for LBVs... just going by Rob's numbers.) I've never heard a producer talk about 3 years for an LBV... it's always referred to as 4-6 years.