1967 Krohn Colheita

[Houston Porter]

Does cloudiness in an old Colheita indicate anything in particular?

I purchased a couple bottles of 1967 Krohn Colheita for a Colheita taste we held back in June. (Why buy only one bottle if I'm having to pay for shipping anyways, right?) However, once opened, we noticed that it was quite hazy/cloudy, which I've never seen before, although I've only opened about 30 Colheita's so far.

(We sampled Kopke (1966 & 1978), Krohn (1967 & 1968), Messias (1966 & 1968), Grahams (1969), and Burmester (1980 - because this one has been one of our favorites for a while, so even though the youngest of the bunch, at only 34y, we wanted to see how it would stand up, and it did quite well, especially later into our research, which entailed tasting all these Colheita's once a week for 8 weeks.))

I know that the 1967 and 1968 Krohn won't be identical, but I expected them to be much closer than they were. One was 39yo (1967 bottled in 2006) and one was 40yo (1968 bottled in 2008), and both have been stored side-by-side I purchased them a few months prior, so it isn't like I stirred one up and not the other. Both had sediment, which didn't surprise me, but the cloudiness in the 1967 was unique among the 8 bottles we opened, and stood out enough that everyone noticed.

So, my questions is this:
Does cloudiness in an old Colheita indicate anything in particular, like that it may have been stored improperly?

Thanks again for any advice/insight you may have on the topic.
Houston

[Al B.]

As far as I know (and I'm not a colheita expert, by any means) the cloudiness doesn't indicate anything bad. It's simply the wine forming a very slight sediment after being in the bottle for a few years, but the sediment hasn't yet reached the stage where it is big enough and heavy enough to settle properly. Give the bottle another 10-20 years and you'll likely see that thin layer of fine sludge that sometimes develops in a colheita.

On the other hand, I have seen more cloudy wines which are oxidised than cloudy wines which are not oxidised, but these have all been vintage port and not colheita.

[Andy Velebil]

That cloudiness that tawny's get is from a very fine sediment that can take months to settle back out once disturbed. As Alex mentioned, it will form after some years in bottle. Why some do and some don't get it depends on a number of factors, the biggest being how it was handled prior to being bottled. How it was fined, filtered and/or stabilization treatments affect the type of sediment that forms with time.

You can have the same wine, bottled at different times and treated differently before being bottled, where one gets hazy and one doesn't.

[Houston Porter]

Thanks for the insight. I guess I was hoping that there was some bad handling/storage explanation for why the 1967 Krohn Colheita is not nearly as good as the 1968 (since they looked so different), but I guess '68 was just a better year between these two Colheita's. (I have more bottles of each so will likely revisit this comparison in the future to see if there are any changes, but that 68' is pretty hard to beat.)