AWS Port Seminar Tasting - April 15th

This tasting is really what the AWS chapter is about.  You will get a chance to learn about a particular wine by tasting many different variations. There are no tests or grades, just a lot of good wine and fun. Since a little bit of Port goes a long way this tasting will be able to handle a few more guest than usual. Make your reservations soon for this exciting event as I am sure you will learn a lot about one of the worlds great wines.

Port is a fortified wine made from grapes grown in the vineyards of Portugal’s Douro Valley. Port is named for the city of Oporto located at the mouth of the Rio Douro River.

There are over 90 different varieties of grape permitted to be grown in the Port wine region. Of these, about 30 different varieties can be found there, but only 5 are considered to be of exceptional quality. These are Touriga Nacional, Tinta Roriz, Tinta Barroca, Tinto Cão, and Touriga Francesa. White Port, is made from white grapes rather than the aforementioned red grapes — Viosinho, Malvasia Fina, Gouveio, Cédega, and Rabigato. 

While there are many styles of Port they can generally be classified into two categories.: bottle aged or cask aged.  These two processes result in distinctly different wines. Bottle aged ports are aged for a short time in wood and are bottled without filtration to age gracefully in the bottle. Cask aged Port are aged in wood and then filtered and bottled.  During this process they loose some of there original dark ruby color and are often referred to as Tawny (due to the color the take on).

There are many styles of Port:

Ruby is the most basic and least expensive port.  It is a blend from the produce of several harvest and usually spend two to three years in stainless steel or wood before it is bottled.

Tawny is usually aged for 6 or more years in the cask before it is filtered and bottled.  These usually have a pale (tawny) color and taste drier and nuttier due to the oxidation.

Aged Tawny – these are the best of the tawny Ports. The average age of the Ports used in the blend are usually put on the bottle.  These may be 10, 20, 30 or even 40 year old blends. Blending of this level of Ports take a real master and create some of the finest examples of Ports in this category.

Colheita is a tawny but from a single vintage that has been in wood a minimum of seven years.  These wines usually have the year printed when they were bottled and normally should be drunk within a year of that date. These are probably the rarest of all the Port styles.

Crusted Port is a blend of full-bodied first class wines from recent vintages, which have been matured in seasoned oak casks for two to three years before being bottled.  The wine is bottled (unfiltered) and released after aging an additional three years in the bottle.  These are named for the sediment that forms in the bottle.

Vintage Character Ports which might also be referred to as Premium Ruby. They are a blend that has been aged from four to six years before it is filtered and bottled. They characteristically have more body and fruit than a tawny but they lack the concentration and complexity of a true vintage Port.

Single-Quinta Ports are made in both tawny and vintage styles but with the distinction that they come from only one vineyard. They are generally produced in years that are not declared. In declared years, their grapes often form the backbone of the Vintage Port blends.

Late Bottled Vintage or LBV, unlike Vintage Character, are actually from a single vintage. A vintage not deemed good enough to make a Vintage Port, will go into the making of a LBV (also made in vintage years sometimes). It is left in wood for four to six years, then fined and filtered before bottling. It is ready to drink earlier than Vintage Port and they do throw some sediment in the bottle.

Vintage Port is the finest and most expensive of the Port styles. At most, it accounts for about 2% of all production and is one of the most sought after wines in the world. Vintage Port comes from a single harvest of exceptional quality, as stated on the bottle, and is bottled after two to three years of cask ageing. The wine then spends many years maturing in the bottle. It may take 15 to 50 years for a good Vintage Port to be ready for drinking. Each shipper must decided within two years of a harvest year if that particular year will be of enough quality to be released as a Vintage Port. This is known as "declaring the vintage".

Port Style – these are wines made in the styles mentioned above but come from an area outside of the Rio Douro.  Many areas are making excellent examples of Port Style wines with Australia, South Africa and the United States leading the way.

Why not celebrate on tax day with a fine selection of Port. At least it may make you forget all that extra money you sent to the government over the last year.