![[shrug.gif]](./images/smilies/shrug.gif "Huh?"){kind=small}
Meanwhile, well-known Port shipper and Douro winemaker, Cristiano van Zeller, was unavailable at the time and only now was able to send me his very detailed response. I believe you will all enjoy his brilliant views on Tawny. Please feel free to comment or discuss or ask further questions!
Cristiano wrote:
Tawny Port only comes with age. There is no other way. That beautiful orangey colour is the “creation” of time and patience, good old wood casks, great wine and oxygen.
The oxidation factor, together with the natural precipitation of tartrates and colour matter in Red Port, will, with time, transform the black, inky, violet, impenetrable wines that we make during the vintage into the bright translucent and delicate Ports that we know as Tawnies.
In fact, experience tells us that this transformation becomes noticeable after some 6 to 8 years after the harvest, all depending on the ageing conditions (humidity in the cellar, temperature variations during the ageing process, size and style of ageing vats, whether the vats are full or not during the ageing, or part of the ageing, period, etc.) and the “power of the Port at birth.
The more powerful a Port is at vintage, the longer it will take to age.
Great Tawnies have to come from great Ports at vintage. But not necessarily from Vintage Ports. What I am saying is that you do not have to make a Vintage Port to have an outstanding Tawny. Just think that most Baixo Corgo vineyards hardly produced, in history, a great classic Vintage Port, but they do produce outstanding Tawnies. This is mainly due to the fact that, what we are looking for in an old Tanwy is not the intensity of the mature red and black fruit, but the elegance and subtlety of the dry fruit and “smoky”, dry tobacco leaf aromas of great Tawnies. Elegant but well structured Ports at birth will become great Tawnies.
There are not many secrets on how to make great aged tawnies. Blending qualities (experience and technical knowledge) from your team are crucial here. It is like blending aromas for a perfume but adding your palate to it. One has also to know from where can come the best wines for your style, for what you like in and old Tawny. Frankly, only long experience, passed from generation to generation (not necessarily in the same family, but within the same working group), together with consistency of sourcing grapes and wines, can guarantee quality blenders. And great quality Tawny Ports.
Another important factor is to make sure that there is never any compromise with the “need to sell more”. In Tawny Port, like in so many other wines, rush is the first step towards disaster. Can you imagine not being patient when preparing and forecasting sales of a wine that is a minimum 10 years old (even if that’s only the average age of the wines within the blend)? That you have to plan production 10, 12, 15, 20 and more years ahead of sales?
The initial concept of aged Tawnies was “invented” by my great-grandfather Luis Vasconcelos Porto at Noval, back in the 1920’s. The idea was to have a blend that could reflect on the label what was inside, but giving a visible scale of time to the consumer. And, following tradition (Port is a complex blend of vineyards – subregional origins, grape varities, vintages), present wines that would reflect the equivalent to an exact ageing of 10, 20, 30 and over 40 years in cask, but keeping, through the blending, a balanced pattern along the years.
In those days the real mathematical age average in the old Tawnies would be older, from 1 to 5 / 6 years, than the age on the bottle. This would be true in most brands. It was what blenders and consumers alike thought and liked in Tawnies. For example, I remember that, for a 10 Year Old, we would easily aim at having an average age (and taste) of the blend around 12 / 13 years. It was the emergence of the demand for younger and fruitier wines in the world (the change of the taste pattern with New World wines), together with the impressive growth and demand for old tawnies, especially for the 10 Year Old, that lowered the average age of the blends and changed, in a lot of cases, the “old” character of aged tawnies.
This is not necessarily a bad thing and Aged Tawny Ports, like most other Ports, have never been so good and with such great quality.
Frankly, in my own Tawny Ports, I am looking for that “old” character. Maybe this is because that’s what I have learned. Maybe because that if I am looking for fruit, I prefer to go for an LBV or a very good Ruby Reserve Port.
Cheers,
Cristiano