224 Port anD the Douro
niepoort
Niepoort (Vinhos) SA
Rua candido dos Reis, 670, 4400-071 Vila nova de Gaia
tel. (351) 223 777 770
http://www.niepoort-vinhos.com
For five generations this Dutch-owned family firm has been hoarding wines in a cramped
lodge in the heart of Vila Nova de Gaia. The firm was founded in 1842 and, for many
years, Niepoort lay virtually undiscovered, particularly in English-speaking markets. Dirk
Niepoort, who took over the reins from his father Rolf, has done much to promote the
family name at the same time as maintaining and building on the quality of the firm’s wines.
Although single-minded about wine, his interests extend way beyond Port and the Douro.
Dirk Niepoort has been dabbling in wine throughout northern Portugal and has built up an
eclectic cellar of wines from around the world. His commitment shows.
Until the late 1980s, the company had no vineyards of its own. Instead Niepoort built
up strong contacts with small farmers, mainly in and around the Pinhão valley. In 1988
and 1989, Niepoort bought two adjoining properties, Quinta de Napoles and Quinta do
Carril overlooking the River Tedo, giving them a total of fifty hectares of grade-A vines.
The company owns the Museu dos Lagares in Vale de Mendiz where Ports are made
under the auspices of Nick Delaforce (ex-Croft and Delaforce). Niepoort have built a
new winery, designed by an Austrian architect and mostly for Douro wines, at Quinta
de Napoles.
Niepoort earned its reputation for some fine tawnies and colheitas, but from ruby
to vintage, Niepoort ship small quantities of excellent wines. Vintage Ports tend to be
solid and foursquare in their youth, not as ‘showy’ as some, needing time for that surly
facade to break down to display underlying fruit and finesse. Niepoort 1970, 1955 and
1927 count among the very best of those vintages: huge, concentrated wines with the
power and depth to develop further in bottle (even the 1927). Recent vintages have
proved impressive with a ripe, tannic underbelly supporting dense, concentrated fruit
although there is a worrying incidence of volatile (vinegary) wines from 1987, 1994 and
- LBVs produced in larger quantities from interim years are bottled unfiltered and,
given sufficient bottle age, they can be more impressive than some shippers’ fully declared
vintages!
The company also bottles a very fine array of aged tawnies, graduating from so-called
‘Junior’, through ‘Senior’ to ten-, twenty- and thirty-year-old wines, all of which belong
in the premier league. Stocks of colheitas date back to 1935, becoming increasingly
maderised with age, and I was recently presented with a half-bottle of extraordinarily
rich dessert white Port dating back to 1895. Niepoort is unique in maintaining a stock of
garrafeira Ports, which age in wood followed by glass demi-johns before being ‘decanted’
into bottles. In an era when many Port shippers have become prey to economies of scale
and standardisation, Niepoort is a welcome idiosyncrasy.