For The Love Of Port

This morning, I had a conversation with a local importer who has the national rights to distribute both Rocha and Kopke. He mentioned that he has been asked a question that he'd like to know the answer to. I did not know the answer either and thought this question would make for a great topic here in case someone does have the answer. Please do not surmise or guess, because we both are able to come up with responses that make sense ... but never having seen the following process, nor read about it ... it would be great to have the facts:

When Colheita is topped off in the Port lodges in Vila Nova de Gaia, they must use wines from the same vintage. So in order to top off 10 pipes (about 600+ cases) they probably have to sacrifice one cask to do so. But it doesn't take up the entire contents of one pipe to do the filling and of course, the quantity will always vary. So what do they do with the rest of that particular Colheita that was not used from the "filling" cask?

If anyone has direct knowledge of this procedure, I'd be very interested to hear about that process.

Thanks

I had a talk with Fonseca/Taylor PR manager while I was in Portugal about this. The Taylor group do not do colheita's but keep very old reserve to blend in their Tawnys. So when they add a 120 years old port into the blend, if they don't empty its barrel, they will transfer the remaining into another smaller barrel to reduce the surface in contact with oxygen.

Actually The Fladgate Partnership DOES produce Colheita or I should say, I believe they will continue the traditional Colheitas produced by Delaforce. If something has changed and they no longer have plans to do so, that is news to me. It certainly is plausible.

Your are correct Roy, my mistake. I did not think about Croft/Delaforce when I wrote that. I did not heard anything about Delaforce stopping the production of Colheita. And Romariz too, part of the group, does produce Colheita.