For The Love Of Port

Hi You Tawnyfreaks and Colheita Sharks

The other day Eric was "Menchen", that he had seen a Niepoort Colheita 1935 at an auctionhouse, and that made me remember my question.
I have been the lucky owner of 2 different bottlings of the 35 er from they year (1972 and 1977), and I have seen a 35er bottled in 1987, as I remember. Are there any more different years of engarrafado for the Ni 35?

And does any of You lucky guys, who has been to the Niepoort Lodge in Gaia, knows, if there are more old Colheitas from allready know "vintages", laying around in the Dusty cellars just waiting to be bottled?

I have an other question while, I am a the keyboard..

The original VV from Niepoort. Was it made in a specific timeframe, lets say in the 1950s and 1960s, or was it made from time to time, when the market was ready?

And one last thing; the new VV from Dirks hand, was made from the old batch of 1963, the older brother of the VV does anybody knows the blend? Or is that a Compagny secret?

Al the Best from the Danish sPort
Allan

Allan,

I've just stumbled across your post and noticed you had no replies.

As far as I am aware, there was only a short bottling run of the original VV blend that was put in pota style bottles. This blend was bottled in the 1950s and was made from 50% of 1863 and 50% being a mixture of wines ranging from 1900 to 1950. The exact composition of the 50% of missed wines varied very slightly by bottling. I'm not sure how many bottles were ever filled of the original production run. I'd love to find out.

The recent release by Dirk also used the 1863 as the base wine, but I don't know what the rest of the blend was.

Alex

Let me try to answer to my best.

For the 1935, I've never tried it and don't recall having seen any.

Is there any old colheita still in barrels at Niepoort lodges? Hard to say as there is no years written on any barrels, but I'd say yes! Don't ask me the years. The other day I was walking around with Marco Niepoort and he made me taste and old Port from Pre-1900 and some very old Quinado Porto still in barrel. So there are some stuff, for fun, personnal uses or for eventual releases... I don't know!

One interesting thing is that Niepoort has a lot of Old Port in Demijhons from from different years. They have a lot of unusual things, I tasted a 1895 White Garrafeira Port bottled in 2005 this year. The reason is that Niepoort was a very small company and it was cheaper back in the days to store Port in demijhons and have a bigger warehouse than having a few barrels that you had to keep refilling, which meant hiring more people. We did the math and there are around 7 thousands demijhons at the old Niepoort Lodge! It means a lot of surprises!

The original VV was from my understanding a base of 1863 + other things that was blended and put aside around 1900 to age separatly for a long time. Dirk great grandfather meant to make the BEST Niepoort Tawny. Then it was bottled in laste 40's and 50's. I don't know how many different bottlings there is but I've seen 3 different stencyl. I've tasted the wine 3 times but only seen once the VV painted by hand and not machine, I still have the empty bottle with me. I bought it from a Portuguese who immigrate to Canada in the 50's and brought some wines with him.

The new VV is a blend of 1863 as a base and then 2 other years from 1880's and 1890's and bottled in 2011.