1985 Kopke Porto Colheita

1985 Kopke Porto Colheita

1985 Kopke Porto Colheita

Colheita Port is a single vintage-dated Tawny Port. It is similar to Tawny Port in production, appearance and flavor, but the key difference is that Colheita is the product of a single vintage and can therefore show considerable variation from year to year.

It is aged in wood for at least seven years, giving it a nutty, oxidized character. Although legally required to spend seven years in barrel, often spends as long as 20 years. During this time, the wine undergoes oxidative aging, making it closer in style to Aged Tawny than any other Port style.

The word colheita is Portuguese for “harvest” or “vintage”, but it is stylistically quite different from Vintage Port, which is typically more robust and barrel-aged for no more than a few years. The same process as Vintage Port is required for a Colheita year to be “declared”. Samples are submitted to the Institute of Douro and Porto Wine in January, two years after harvest and after quality assessment, vintage declarations are made by institute at the end of June.

Both the vintage year and the date of bottling are included on front and back labels respectively, and should serve as a consumption guide: generally, Colheita Port should be consumed within a year of bottling.

Red Port is blended together using a number of grape varieties. The precise identity of these, and the proportion each represents in the final blend, may not be known even to the winemaker. For some growers in the Douro region of Portugal, the ambiguity over what is in their fortified wines is not an attempt to protect some proprietary secret, but rather a matter of reality as they simply don’t know for sure which variety they have growing in their vineyards.