5. Vintage Port
Although vintage Port only accounts for a tiny fraction of total shipments, for most shippers
it represents the very pinnacle of production. The British-owned shippers in particular have
built (and sometimes destroyed) their individual reputations on the back of vintage Port. In
spite of the reluctance of some Portuguese-owned firms to embrace vintage Port in the same
way, this category has become a flagship for the entire trade. For this reason I decided to
devote an entire chapter to vintage Port. It could easily be the subject for an entire book.
All the approbation that surrounds vintage Port belies the fact that it is one of the most
straightforward of all Ports to produce. Wines from a single year are bottled, without
treatment or filtration, after spending a maximum of two years ageing in bulk. The skill
in producing a vintage Port is in the selection of the lotes made from the finest grapes,
picked at optimum ripeness after a successful growing season. To a certain extent this
is predetermined as most shippers know their own quintas intimately, as well as those
belonging to their long-term suppliers. Many of the most successful vintage Ports are
therefore based on grapes from the same plots of vines in the same properties, year after
year. The grapes need to be very well worked during vinification, usually either foot
trodden in lagar and/or subject to mechanical extraction by piston plunging or robotic
treading (see Chapter 3). After the harvest these Ports are put to one side and monitored
as potential vintage lotes. The wines have traditionally been kept in large wooden vats
(balseiros) in order to prevent undue oxidative ageing, but since the microbiological scare
of the mid-1980s a number of shippers have resorted to using stainless steel. As one well-
known shipper of vintage Port remarked, ‘handling and hygiene are more important than
the material from which the vessel is made’.
Under the rules set out by the IVDP, the shippers have up to two years to decide whether
to ‘declare’ the wine as vintage. As most of the major shippers have premises cheek by
jowl with each other in Vila Nova de Gaia, there is inevitably a certain amount of debate
about the overall quality of the harvest and the weekly Wednesday lunch at the Factory
House is often a forum for discussion. But contrary to received opinion, declaration is
an independent decision taken by the shipper and one that isn’t made lightly. More often