Quinta do Vesuvio - 2001 Vintage

[H Port-er]

I just decanted a bottle of Quinta do Vesuvio 2001 Vintage and found it have a ton of sediment. Is this unusual? Just last week we opened a bottle of Graham's Quinta dos Malvedos 2001 and it had virtually no sediment.

Is this simply the nature of different port houses, or does this have more to do with storage?

[Eric Menchen]

Tannins binding to form longer molecules and eventually precipitating out to settle on the bottom of a bottle is a chemical reaction, so storage could play a role in accelerating or slowing that. But for something that has been in the bottle for less than 15 years, I doubt that is the primary factor here. I suspect it has more to do with the producers involved and how much tannin extraction they got from the grapes in the first place. Just my opinion.

[Poyee K]

I have had several younger Vesuvios at home and also noticed sediment in some bottles. I think it is Vesuvio specific. But to me this is such an enjoyable single Quinta and bears such wonderful memories from Port Harvest 2 last year that sediment does not bother me.


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[Andy Velebil]

Excellent question and not a simple answer as there are a lot of variables. As Eric mentioned, phenolic molecules will bind together to form tannin polymers that fall out of solution and make what we call sediment. Sediment (called Lees when still in the barrel before bottling) comes from several things. Dead yeast cells, the grapes themselves, grape skins, seeds and stems. How much racking (carefully removing the wine from the lees in barrel and transferring that racked off wine into a clean barrel) is done will affect how much sediment will form in bottle. So if producer "A" racks off the wine several times before bottling there will be less in the wine to start with and less you will see in bottle later. If Producer "B" doesn't rack off much Lees and bottles it, you'll get more sediment in the bottle.

Also, how much fining it may receive after being racked but before being bottled will also affect how much precipitates out. The more a producer fines, the more it removes those molecular things that bind together and turn into sediment. And if a producer uses some form of cold stabilization that will also affect how much sediment will precipitate out in bottle.

Sediment typically drops out of solution a lot at first then as the wine ages, in bottle or barrel, that amount eventually slows to a crawl. That's why even in bottles that are just a few years old you can get varying degrees of sediment in them.

To answer your question, it generally has nothing to do with storage. It is producer dependent depending on how they handle and treat the wine and of course the grapes themselves and their make up.

[Mike Meehan]

Would it also be the case that significant bottle variation could occur, depending on how the port is flowed into the bottle filler, with some uneven distribution of sediment forming materials occurring?

[Andy Velebil]

Would it also be the case that significant bottle variation could occur, depending on how the port is flowed into the bottle filler, with some uneven distribution of sediment forming materials occurring?

Yes in theory. But generally the wine is racked off the lees into something else prior to it being bottled. So it should all be relatively consistent. Of course if someone bottled without doing so, then you would eventually get to the bottom of whatever it was being stored in and if there are any lees left you could suck them up and into the bottle.