For The Love Of Port

I'll make historians out of you 'ers yet!

Google, books, websites ... have at it and then put your findings here. This should be very interesting as there is a lot of confusion and contradictory stories and conclusions drawn about this.

O.K. - there seems to be a few conflicting stories concerning this topic, regardless of that Vargellas is generally considered as the producer of the first Single Quinta Port. Some accounts mention the 1820's as the timeframe of the initial Single Quinta Port from Vargellas although the 1958 Vargellas Single Quinta vintage is typically used as the benchmark. With that said Quinta do Infantado has the honor of being the first officially declared Single Quinta Port declared after the change in the regulations in the Douro. Any other opinions???

Marc

Noval Nacional

Marc J. wrote:O.K. - there seems to be a few conflicting stories concerning this topic, regardless of that Vargellas is generally considered as the producer of the first Single Quinta Port. Some accounts mention the 1820's as the timeframe of the initial Single Quinta Port from Vargellas although the 1958 Vargellas Single Quinta vintage is typically used as the benchmark. Any other opinions???
Marc

According to James Suckling's book "Vintage Port" the first bottling of Vargellas was 1822.

Well we know for sure it was certainly not Nacional which did not bottle anything before 1931. I have SQVP (empty) in my possession that came decades before that.

Roy Hersh wrote:Well we know for sure it was certainly not Nacional which did not bottle anything before 1931. I have SQVP (empty) in my possession that came decades before that.

Most likely Vargellas then. I was reading a port book over the holiday I think he mentioned Vargellas as being the first...

Hummm.....after a bit of research it looks as though Quinta de Roriz released a 1870 SQVP which might be a contender for the title of the first SQVP. Vesuvio was also producing SQVP, but it is a little unclear as to the first Vesuvio SQ vintage.

Marc J. wrote:O.K. - there seems to be a few conflicting stories concerning this topic, regardless of that Vargellas is generally considered as the producer of the first Single Quinta Port. Some accounts mention the 1820's as the timeframe of the initial Single Quinta Port from Vargellas although the 1958 Vargellas Single Quinta vintage is typically used as the benchmark.

This seems to be the same info I am getting from Oldenburgs book, as well as something rather vague about the Kopke "Quinta Roriz", which should be from some time well before 1935.

Easy answer - it depends!

It all depends on what you mean by a SQVP. If you mean a wine bottle with the words on the label "Single Quinta Vintage Port" then I don't have a clue. Or perhaps you mean a port which was recognised by the IVP as a single quinta wine - in which case I still don't know as I'm not sure when the rules which governed this style of port were introduced.

Or perhaps you mean simply a port which was produced from the grapes grown on a single estate and then bottled under the name of the estate. Tricky - I still don't have a clue :| but I suspect that it would have been Roriz, Vargellas or Vesuvio since all three were marketing wines in the UK under their own names in the first half of the 1800s. I haven't read anything about port being shipped in the 1700s under the name of a single estate so I suspect that the very first SQVP which was shipped as a bottle of vintage port produced from the grapes from a single estate would have been in the 1820s, give or take a decade.

So what is the bottle in your hand, Roy?

Good to see an older thread revived. I have been slowly working my way through a book about The Factory House, and while not an easy book to read, it has a section about when Port really became Port as we know it today. That is, being fortified to 19-21% ABV, bottled after about 2-3 years, etc. It seems that most "port" from the 1700's and early 1800's wasn't fortified until after fermentation had been completed and the brandy was added to stabilize it and allow it to survive the long trip to England. There may have been some outliers where someone stopped fermentation part way through, but it seems that the alcohol content was still a bit less than what is now required.

So are we talking a "port" as it was known back then? Or are we talking a Port as we know it today?

Also, I wonder how many Quinta's or Producers blended their best VP's from other sources? I know some did, but I wonder if some didn't. So back in the 1800's, if Roriz produced a VP under the Quinta de Roriz label, was it really from just that Quinta or a blend of grapes from other quinta's?

Andy Velebil wrote: It seems that most "port" from the 1700's and early 1800's wasn't fortified until after fermentation had been completed and the brandy was added to stabilize it and allow it to survive the long trip to England. There may have been some outliers where someone stopped fermentation part way through, but it seems that the alcohol content was still a bit less than what is now required.

So are we talking a "port" as it was known back then? Or are we talking a Port as we know it today?

:stupid:

Just as the they used other fruits in their wine to make them sweeter or whatever (the "olde" days). Does non-grape fruit if from the same Quinta count too?

Andy is onto something here.

First a clarification, Nacional is a Single Vineyard Vintage Port, not a SQVP.

I have a bottle of 1912 Vargellas which was made in the way we nowadays think of Vintage Port. The 1863 Vezuvio which we had together (Alex, Andy and others in June 2007) some believe to be Vintage, while others say ... Colheita. Those early 1800s Vargellas definitely were not what we would now consider to be Port wine.

Alex, although my question was vague, I was not intentionally trying to be tricky. There are so many opinions on this topic it seems hard to pin down one specific bottling.

In July 1828, Christies salerooms listed "thirty dozens of fine Old Port, including Roriz"

This is possibly the earliest surviving record of Port being sold from a named quinta. Whether the wine was fortified to the same degree as today is not really significant; the wine was clearly known as Port and sold as such.

Tom

Broadbent lists an 1815 Quinta do Vesuvio - which at the time was owned by Ferriera, who declared an 1815 VP.

But I think that unless we can establish the alcoholic content of the wine and be clear when it was bottled, we won't know if it was a single quinta vintage port or a single quinta colheita port or just a single quinta slightly fortified table wine.

I :? suppose we'll just have to try them and see what we think

But I think that unless we can establish the alcoholic content of the wine and be clear when it was bottled, we won't know if it was a single quinta vintage port or a single quinta colheita port or just a single quinta slightly fortified table wine.

The definition of what is a Port wine, and what defines a Vintage Port has evolved over the years.

When considering what the earliest example of an SQVP might be, you have two options:

a) The earliest example of wine fortified to 20-22% and bottled in the second or third year after vintage.

or

b) The earliest example of wine sold and recognised as port from a specific vintage.

Although there is evidence that fortification levels were once inconsistant, often low; but may also sometimes have been higher; this did not prevent the wine from being sold and known as Port.

The distinction between Colheitas and Vintage ports was also once blurred.

Here lies another question:

When was the word Colheita first put on the label of a bottle offered for sale? - as distinct from very old wines bottled more recently, and wines that fit the definition of a Colheita, but were not sold as such.

It could be as little as twenty years since the first Colheita was actively marketed under that name in the UK - but for other markets? - I have no idea...

Tom

Alex wrote:

But I think that unless we can establish the alcoholic content of the wine and be clear when it was bottled, we won't know if it was a single quinta vintage port or a single quinta colheita port or just a single quinta slightly fortified table wine.

I wholeheartedly agree with the point and question you've raised. I don't think there is really any clear cut answer unless we find a historian who might know and I only know one with that type of knowledge.



Tom:

As you know the fortification process came much later into the picture and was totally an accident. When I say that, I am talking about fortification used to prematurely retard fermentation for reasons we all know. That differs from fortification used to bolster the wine during its voyage in pipe, to the UK, which was dry and known as Port too.

It could be as little as twenty years since the first Colheita was actively marketed under that name in the UK - but for other markets? - I have no idea...

Brazil was a big Colheita consumer as well as Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Brussels, and many other European countries which have had Colheita imports for much longer than the UK. Part of that is due to the reluctance of the British Shippers (Warre's a rare exception and Delaforce a decade later) in most cases, to produce the Portuguese style wood aged Port known as Colheita back even just a few decades ago. Part of it was they did not want to embrace the Portuguese word itself. Also, by far and away the largest market for Colheita, was Portugal itself. The vast majority of Colheita produced today is still consumed within Portugal and many great bottlings never leave the country whatsoever.

uncle tom wrote: a) The earliest example of wine fortified to 20-22% and bottled in the second or third year after vintage.
or
b) The earliest example of wine sold and recognised as port from a specific vintage.

For this question, IMHO we should go with 'b'.

Eric Menchen wrote:

uncle tom wrote: a) The earliest example of wine fortified to 20-22% and bottled in the second or third year after vintage.
or
b) The earliest example of wine sold and recognised as port from a specific vintage.

For this question, IMHO we should go with 'b'.

I think I would agree with that and also with Tom.

Port has been defined as "Port" for 350 years, even though the way it is made today is different from the way it was made at that time. For fun, it's worth looking to see if we can discover when the first single-quinta wine called port was shipped.

And those wines we tried from the 1815 vintage a couple of years back were much drier than today's ports, but that could be a feature of their age rather than of the way they were made.