For The Love Of Port

I beleive that the IVP have no guidelines for reserves as they do for colheitas.But have been told that reserves come from a single barrel of that year while colheitas are from several barrels of the year.Please correct me if I'm wrong.

I don't think there is any regulation connected with the barrel (or pipe) that the wine comes from. Port will be moved from one pipe to another on a regular basis throughout it's maturation to allow the pipes to be cleaned and I think it would be very rare to find a mature wine that had spent it's entire life in one pipe.

Colhieta is a tawnt port produced from grapes from a single harvest. Reserve is a new category of port which replaced some others and, I think, is a blend of wines from any harvest with an average age of 7 years or more.

Derek

I was told from an employee at Romariz that this was the case but it was not concrete because there is no legislation fron the IVP.

I have a 67 reserve bottled in 72 so it's not that new

Simon,

Although the word Reserve (and/or Reserva) has been use on port labels for many years it did not become a category in it's own right until 2005, replacing Vintage Character.

Please take a look at this thread for some comments from Mario and Roy - http://www.fortheloveofport.com/ftlopfo ... .php?t=546

I think there is also an article in one of the old Newsletters with more details about this new category.

Thanks Derek I'll look

The reserves I have seem identical to colheitas but Francisco I won't drop company names said that it is unregulated not new.

Simon,

Given that the new regulations came into being in 2005 it is probaby correct that anything labelled "Reserve" that was produced prior to that year is not covered by this or any other special category regulations. I think this was part of the reason why the new official category was created.

Derek

Simon I know exactly what you mean. A few years back you could see on the shelves of wine stores some Port being label as Reserve 1976 or Reserve 1982 mainly from the English shippers.

This was a marketing technique to charm the America's countries mainly because they would not know what is a Colheita and that Reserve brings more prestige to the bottle as in so many other region this is a word associated with prestige.

To my knowledge this is exactly the same bottle as a Colheita. For exemple you could find a Dow's 1982 Colheita and a 1982 Reserve from the same barrels and same bottling date, except the products would be distributed in different countries. I have had a few experiences with the Dow and Warre brand so far.

I do think though that this is not allowed anymore because I haven't seen any Reserve meaning Colheita in the past four bottling years.