2021 Port Harvest Tour 2 - a short review

[Glenn E.]

I've just returned from the Port Harvest Tour, and it was pretty fantastic! I believe that Stewart is planning to write a more detailed trip report for the FTLOP newsletter, but I thought I'd provide a short review of my own since not everyone receives the newsletter. This year's tour ran from Sunday, September 26 through Sunday, October 3.

I've counted my TNs, and if I managed to record everything we tasted exactly 100 Ports as part of the tour. I tasted an additional 29 before the tour and 6 after, so my total was 135 in 10 days! Whee!

Edit: I remembered 1 more Port, so the total for the tour bumped up from 99 to an even 100, and my personal total bumped from 134 to 135!

This is one of those times when the fact that I don't drink dry wine (or beer) comes in handy. I suspect that everyone else probably also tasted at last 50 dry/table wines on top of all the Port.

Day 1: Sunday, September 26
Niepoort! Their lodge on Serpa Pinto has been newly renovated and is now an awesome place to visit. It was always cool for us Port geeks, but there's been a lot of spit and polish applied and it's now suitable for higher-end tourists as well. (It's still probably a bit too geeky for your average tourist.) Axel Probst (WorldOfPort.de) joined us, as did Dirk and Daniel Niepoort. We tasted a few of interesting comparisons head-to-head including the Garrafeira and VP from 1987, and the Colheita and VP from 1970. The visit was capped off by an extremely rare (according to Dirk there are only 2 more bottles left in the world) 1931 Vintage Port.

Day 2: Monday, September 27
Quinta de Brunheda! Visits to Brunheda are always fun because Pedro and Delio are such awesome hosts. You're never quite sure what you're drinking because to be completely honest they're not entirely sure, either. We tasted through 5 cask samples ranging in age from a 15-year old White made from Malvasia Fina and Codiga Larinho, to a Tawny that was at least 80 years old. We also tasted the 10-20-30-40 lineup from Blackett, and a special bottle that Delio produced after lunch that was at least 125 years old. That one blew my socks off giving Brunheda their 2nd 100 from me! (Ooh... I should rate producers like Michelin stars, except with 100-point scores!)

That evening we had dinner at DOC with George Sandeman and Ligia Marques. George and Ligia are individually great hosts, but when you put them across the table from each other they're hilarious. We compared and contrasted the 1963 and 1966 Fonsecas, and then finished the evening with a DR L70.

Day 3: Tuesday, September 28
Our afternoon visit was to Quinta do Portal with Pedro Branco and Paulo Cotinho. They showed us a couple of non-Port fortified wines made from Moscatel do Douro, both of which were very nice. We also got to see many of the old signed casks in the cellar, including a couple signed on previous FTLOP trips - including my first visit to Portal! They then led us through a tasting of several cask samples culminating in a wine straight from demijohn that they purchased and serve on special occasions. It is approximately 90 years old, was aged entirely in the Douro, and was put in demijohn after it was purchased in 2014 because for whatever reason it didn't react well to being put into a different barrel. It's pretty spectacular now!

Day 4: Wednesday, September 29
What a great day! We started at Bulas with Isabel Vieira and Rosario Carvalhas, who took us through an interesting tasting where we compared their dry whites to their sweet whites. Yes, they make both! So far that seems to be unusual, but I suspect other producers will follow suit in the coming years. Unsurprisingly I liked the sweet whites better and purchased a couple of bottles of the 30 year old to bring home.

That afternoon we went back to one of my favorite places in the Douro, aka Paradise, aka Port Knox, aka Quinta do Mourao! Miguel Braga and his niece Rita Braga Carvalho were our hosts and we tasted through the white and tawny lineups in the armazem known as Port Knox. Then we returned to the winery and tasted 4 not-yet-released Ports: the 1972 and 1948 colheitas which until now have been the mother wines of the 30 yo and 40 yo tawynies, and 2 products for brand new categories - a VOW and VOT (very old white and very old tawny) created for the new Muito Velho (80+ years old) category. Miguel told us that these blends are approximately 130 and 140 years old respectively, and the VOT notched the 2nd 100-point score for me on this trip. (That's like 5 that I've given Miguel's wines, and I give a lot of 98s and 99s at Quinta do Mourao as well.)

Dinner was caldo verde and cabrito at Quinta do Vallado, which is always a treat.

Day 5: Thursday, September 30
Quinta do Vesuvio! One of my favorite "Vintage Port" stops in the Douro, both for the wines and for the incredible setting. The patio that looks out over the Douro has to be one of the best places in the world to eat lunch, especially when they serve the 1992 Colheita after you're done eating! We tasted through an 8-bottle mini-vertical, with the 1994 and 2011 anchoring the ends. Both were superb.

Dinner on Thursday was once again at DOC, this time with Dominic Symington as the Guest of Honor. We ate well, as always, and finished the evening with 2 Ports that were relevant to Dominic: a 1937 Dow Colheita (nee "Vintage Port Matured in Wood") that was made by his grandfather, and an 1863 Dona Antonia Adelaide Ferreira that was made at Vezuvio (yes, with a Z at that time in history).

Day 6: Friday, October 1
Quinta da Levandeira do Roncao, otherwise known as the home of DR Port. Roy saved a pretty spectacular tasting for our last stop in the Douro, but even he didn't know all of the surprises that were in store for us there! I'll save the biggest surprise for Stewart's article and only talk about the Ports.

As you all know, DR has a lineup that rivals anyone's, including Quinta do Mourao's. That now includes White Ports that are just as impressive as their Tawny Ports. We tasted the 20s and 30s, and the 50 White and 40 Tawny. We finished upstairs with the L70 - which has been Roy's top Tawny Port for the last 2 years - and learned that not all of the L70 was bottled at once. They have 200 bottles worth of Port in the lot, but only bottle on demand so this bottle was from 2020. (It was first bottled in 2017 as I recall.) But the real treats came from downstairs in the "rock room" where we tasted from 2 barrels labeled "100+" - #3 and #1. They were surprisingly different, and helped show just how much the final blending matters. I gave cask #3 100 points but cask #1 "only" 98 points.

Day 7: Saturday, October 2
Back in Porto, we spent that day at World of Wine, a massive project from The Fladgate Partnership. WoW sits below the Yeatman Hotel in Vila Nova de Gaia, and contains something like 9 restaurants and 7 museums. We toured the Wine Experience, Bridge Collection, and History of Porto museums. They are all extremely well done and the entire complex seems very shiny and new. The presence of WoW has reinvigorated VNdG beyond the cais da ribeira with many new shops and tasting rooms, though of course it has also fairly dramatically altered the skyline. None of the buildings are huge, but they replaced many old lodge buildings so the slope of the hill now looks very different from the Porto side of the river.

In between museum tours we stopped for a tasting of 1970 Ports in the Wine School. The Ports were great, but for me the highlight was actually getting to smell TCA for the first time! The wine school has many interesting features, but one of them is a packet of highlighter-sized marker pens that are filled with very specific liquids. One of which is a solution of pure TCA, though presumably diluted so as not to overwhelm the entire facility. But in this pure state I could actually smell it for the first time, and to me it simply smelled like wet stone/slate. I didn't find it offensive at all, which means that I've probably been able to smell it all along but simply noted it as minerality. It still doesn't seem to affect my taste, as the 1970 Taylor we tasted was allegedly mildly corked and I thought it was fantastic.

And there you go! That's just a quick overview to whet your appetite for Stewart's article in the newsletter later this year.

[Eric Menchen]

Sounds like an awesome trip.

Our afternoon visit was to Quinta do Portal ... culminating in a wine straight from demijohn that they purchased and serve on special occasions.

I have tasted from that demijohn, and it just keeps giving. I wonder if it is refreshed perhaps solera style.

[Mark L]

Thanks for this, Glenn! It was amazing to read; i can only dream about experiencing it! One day, Roy! One day! My mouth was watering and I very much hope to enjoy one of these tours (my predictive typing wanted to type "toys" instead of "tours" which is not too entirely far off).

I very much appreciate your taking the time to write that, and I still look forward to the newsletter write up! Your Mourao anecdote reminds me that I still have to receive a bottle of their Very Old White from the first opPortunity from Ayesha that had gone missing before she was able to deliver it to me. I'm still waiting believing it is worth the wait. I would love to crack that open right about now after reading this!

Thanks again, Glenn!

[Al B.]

Hey Glenn,

It was great to catch up with you (and Eric and David) right at the end of your tour. I still can't figure out how you managed to eat that bufete and drink a bottle of Port, but I guess practice helps.

That's a great write-up of the tour you did. It's many years since I did the harvest tour but I still look back on it with fond memories and love the fact I made so many friends on that trip.

Not too long now before those grapes we stomped are mature - a horrifying thought that next year it's only 5 years to go before those bottles reach the proper drinking age for Vintage Port of 21!!

Until next year.

[Roy Hersh]

Great job Glenn. Glad you enjoyed this version of PHT2. I don't know that we'll ever be able to top this one, but we've never stopped trying to this point in time.

Roy