For The Love Of Port

In my continuing updates from a couple of blogs, Oscar Quevedo has posted a youtube video on his blog of the moment when brandy is added to white Port grapes. It's a short clip, but it is the first time I've seen a video of someone doing it. It posted on his website HERE

Adrian Bridge of Taylor Fladgate said recently: “At this stage it would suggest that fine single quintas will be made, not classic vintage”.

A very hot and dry August has lowered yields and given good color.

The full article is from Drinks Business (September 9th) http://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/index. ... &Itemid=66

Hi Shawn,
I hope all has been well with you and thanks for the link.

Looks like Malvedos area got a little welcomed rain this past evening. Despite what some people think, a little rain this time of year can be a good thing.

I don't know if this storm reached Oscar's vineyards or not, but hopefully he can chime in and let us know.

more Malvedos info HERE

The Symington's, Henry Shotton, Miles Edlmann, and the rest of the Symington staff are continuing to do a great job updating the Malvedos Blog many times a day. My hat goes off to them for this and for keeping it focused on the harvest.

For those in London, Quevedo will be streaming live video of the harvest from 9am to 6pm on Tuesday 22nd.

Quevedo, Port and Douro wine producer, is streaming live the harvest in its vineyards in the Douro to a wine tasting room in London. The live video will be shown next Tuesday, September 22nd 2009 in a big screen of the Boutique Wineries Tasting’s (BWT) main room. At the same time, all the video streaming will be available in the internet through the link Harvest 2009.

for more info, check out http://quevedoportwine.com/

Having just spent a 10 days at Vesuvio I am now back in Porto for a couple of days to catch-up on paperwork before heading back up again for the remainder of the week.

The Vesuvio vintage has been going very well and the vines, surprisingly seem to have resisted the worst of the heat. Vesuvio is by nature quite hot and therefore the vines have adapted themselves to these extremely harsh conditions.

There is clearly some water stress, particularly on the younger vines which haven’t yet got their root structure well established. Overall however the generally northern facing aspect of the Quinta has helped to protect the vines from the worst of the ravages of the searing sun. The dust is unbelievable!

We started the vintage two weeks ago at the height of the heat with the Tinta Barroca which due to its normally thin skin had suffered quite considerably from the lack of moisture. The graduations were extremely high due to the concentration of sugars in the fruit but some nice wines have been made. We followed with the Tinta Roriz which, as in the rest of the Douro valley seems to have enjoyed the climate with very respectable yields and graduations. Some very good Roriz wines have been made. We have now moved on to selected parcels of Touriga Nacional which has unfortunately suffered from the heat and very dry conditions. The Saturday night lagar – one day’s picking normally gives for 1 full lagar – was only half full due to the small berry size giving lower yields. The musts however seem to be very good with the lovely floral aromas so typical of this varietal.

Towards the end of this week we will also start picking some Touriga Franca, Souzão, Amarela & Tinto Cão. The exact order of daily picking will be decided as we go forward and switch from one parcel to another looking for the optimum conditions for each varietal depending on vineyard location.

Thankfully the weather has cooled and we had some very welcome raindrops at Vesuvio, but unfortunately so few that we debated between ourselves quite how many had actually fallen. I think I felt 6!

I’ll try to drop another note when I’m back down in Porto next week.

Dominic Symington

Thanks for the update Dominic, I hope the problems with the Touriga Nacional are purely those of quantity rather than quality!

Tom

Hi Shawn. Very nice to see you posting. Maybe the Bay Area Port guys can get together for a tasting sometime? Thanks for the link!
-Dave-

Dominic,

Thank you for the update on Quinta do Vesuvio.

How is Quinta da Cavadinha coming along?

Oh, and don't forget your umbrella. I hear those sudden down pours at Quinta's can leave one all wet

Many thanks

In reply to a couple of questions about the production at Quinta do Vesuvio. Touriga Nacional. The quality looks superb, it’s only the yields that are down somewhat. I will be back there tomorrow afternoon and will send an update.

I’ll ask Miles to post a more detailed reply on Cavadinha. I bumped into him and Charles Sunday evening as I dropped in to see my parents at their Quinta das Andorinhas which is beside Cavadinha. They were doing some maturation studies and now that the weather has cooled a bit they have decided to hold off for a few days to see how the vines develop.

Andy, don’t worry about localized rain, I’ll hang on to the hose pipe with my hand on the tap when I pass through Malvedos tomorrow morning on my way to Vesuvio!

Dominic Symington

Dominic,
Again, many thanks for chiming in so often about how the harvest is coming along. It is great to get such up to date first hand accounts.


Did anyone catch the live web cam at Quevedo today? I caught some of it this morning before work and it was good to see all that goes on at the Quevedo winery during harvest. Thanks Oscar.

I must say that Oscar and the Symington's are true leaders in the "on-line revolution" happening in the Douro. It's exciting to see it unfold after many years. Keep up the great work gentlemen

Andy Velebil wrote:Did anyone catch the live web cam at Quevedo today? I caught some of it this morning before work and it was good to see all that goes on at the Quevedo winery during harvest. Thanks Oscar.

I did. Oscar, the feed was quite good! I even commented on the stream. Too bad we probably won't be visiting Oscar next month..... but you never know!
-Dave-

Miguel Corte Real, whose will celebrate 31 years at Cockburn's this October, sent me this about the harvest.

In the Douro Valley, and mainly in Douro Superior where we grow the vast majority of the grapes we use for Cockburn’s Port, the harvest started one week earlier than usual as a consequence of a hot and dry Summer. As an example of this, Tinta Barroca and the white grape varieties from the hottest “terroirs” like Vilariça Valley started as early as August 31st. At the main Quintas of Cima Corgo and Douro Superior, the grapes started to be hand picked on September 7th or latest on September 14th. After rigorous maturation studies conducted since early August, where sample of berries are collected every week, tasted and analysed to follow-up their evolution, it was decided to start the harvest by picking Tinta Barroca, followed by Touriga Nacional, Tinta Roriz, tinto Cão, and finally Touriga Franca. The harvest will take approximately six weeks and will not finish before mid October. In Douro Superior, and generically speaking, the crop looks much smaller than last year but, helped by the dry environment, it’s totally free from fungus diseases, the quality looks healthy and, even without being very coloured, it looks be very good and useful for blending.

David Spriggs wrote:

Andy Velebil wrote:Did anyone catch the live web cam at Quevedo today? I caught some of it this morning before work and it was good to see all that goes on at the Quevedo winery during harvest. Thanks Oscar.

I did. Oscar, the feed was quite good! I even commented on the stream. Too bad we probably won't be visiting Oscar next month..... but you never know!
-Dave-

David, it great to read this "you never know"! It leaves some uncertainty on the way! Who knows if I will see you again in a couple of weeks!!

The weather was good in Pesqueira during the last weeks Andy. We have already finished the vineyards closer to the Douro river and we are now starting the harvest in the vineyards around the winery. The colors of these musts from 500 meters high (1640 feet) vineyards are much lighter than the musts from the vineyards closer to the river. The advantage of these musts from higher altitude is the acidity. The heating of this Summer reduced the freshness of the grapes, so this year higher acidity musts will help to balance the best Ports.

Dear All

The news from the Douro is that the heat continues. When I came down on Wednesday evening it was 32 degrees centigrade and yesterday saw 34 in Pinhao.

We completed Quinta de Vargellas yesterday and will complete Quinta da Eira Velha today. Our quintas in the Vale de Mendiz will still be picking until the middle of next week.

Yields at Vargellas are 25% down on last year and the theme in the in the Douro is about shortage of grapes. The authorities have not authorised unused Beneficio to be carried forward and many farmers are struggling to cover their authorised Port production. We can expect small quantities of table wine to be made this year.

At the start of harvest we were using up to 950 kg of grapes to make a pipe of Port. This has now reduced as picking has moved down the valley to the Baixo Corgo and into the higher areas. Still nearly 800 kgs are currently being used which is about 7% more than normal and will make this an expensive harvest. I would expect made Port prices to rise.

We are still treading at six locations and a number of Ports that we have made look good. However, the full extent of the impact of this hot year and mature flavours will be apparent once the harvest is complete. This is a year that is testing the winemaking skills.

Best wishes
Adrian

Hello All.
Back from another few days at Vesuvio I stopped by Malvedos and bumped into Paul & Rupert who were also there for a quick lunch as some may have seen on the Malvedos blog (as an aside, they are very excited about now being able to post videos, worth a look). It was good to catch up as we often find during the Vintage that we end up not seeing each other for weeks at a time.

The Vintage at Vesuvio and neighboring Vale de Malhadas is going extremely well.

Vale de Malhadas is on the final straight with the Touriga Franca being picked at the moment. On Wednesday I joined the pickers as they started early in the morning on the “River Vineyard” and watched the sun rise over the far eastern hills. It’s at a time like this that I realize quite how lucky I am… surely there can be no more beautiful place in the world than sunrise in the Douro valley!

We expect to finish either tomorrow or Sunday. The fruit has benefited from a slightly longer maturity and is in superb condition. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that we should get some fantastic wines. The young Touriga Nacional that we picked earlier this week was also excellent although the berry size is very small due to the lack of water. The Touriga Nacional is our youngest vineyard, 3 and 4 years of age and thankfully the vines have resisted the lack of water really very well.

The Vintage at Quinta do Vesuvio continues very well and we are giving the picking team a break this weekend. I think we were the most popular people in town when we announced that there would be no picking Saturday & Sunday … the reasoning for this is two fold. The picking team have now been working flat out for 3 weeks – picking starts at 7am. ending at 5pm. to be followed by treading from 7pm. until 10pm. I think they deserve a break! The other reason is that all the lower lying vineyards of Vesuvio have now been picked and as we have been moving higher the vines have progressively resisted the drought better and the fruit is in superb condition and an extra couple of days will only benefit the maturity and eventual wine quality for both Port and the new Vesuvio table wines.

At Vesuvio we have been picking the Touriga Nacional this week interspersed with some smaller parcels of Tinta Amarela and Souzão. The Touriga Nacional is making some superb wines, the must showing excellent aromas and colour although yields are well down both from an overall production point of view, smaller number of bunches and also from significantly smaller berry size. Graduations have stabalised around 14.5Be./15.5Be giving for some ideal fruit.

The slightly fresher wines we expect to make from the higher ground will be a perfect compliment to the more concentrated wines we have already made from the lower lying vineyards therefore the overall balance is looking pretty good.

After leaving Malvedos yesterday afternoon I dropped in to Bomfim and then Roriz on my way back to Porto. It was 34ºC. at 6pm. Hot!

Now in Porto for the “weekend break” and back to Vesuvio either Monday or Tuesday for the final stretch.

Dominic

It's great to get this feedback from what is beginning to look like a very sound vintage for lasting wines.

- Perhaps this would be the right vintage for Vesuvio to make its debut in large format..

Tom

Adrian and Dominic,

Again many thanks for taking the time to visit and post updates about the harvest. It's wonderful to get such up to date information as the harvest progresses.


Dominic,
Glad to see they got a video up on the Malvedos blog.


Adrian,
Any updates on how Panascal's harvest is coming along?

Uncle Tom, might be able to help you already!

Andy; I think Henry's technological skills were tested to the limit. He complained that they didn't teach him this sort of stuff when he did his oenology degree!

best Dom Symington