What Are Your Favorite White Ports With an Indication of Age

[John M.]

It's summer and I love a White Port post dinner with friends. Always on the look out for new braands so wondering what your favorites are.

Me: Favs are
Portal 10 Year
San Leonardo (Mourao) 10 & 30
Q de Santa Eufemia 20

On the flip side the OK but not impressive are
Andresen 10
Q de Santa Eufemia 10

I've seen Kopke 10 but the price was ridiculously high.

[Mike J. W.]

The Portal 10 and the San Leonardo (Mourao) 10 & 30 are all good, especially the 30 y.o.
The Eufemia 20 y.o. I thought was okay, more average for my taste.
I really like the Barao de Vilar 10 year old. They're in 500 ml bottles, inexpensive ($15) and in my opinion very good. I just found another small stash of them yesterday and their botting date is 2021, versus the other ones I own that are 2018.
The San Leonardo (Mourao) 20 y.o. is good as well.

[Glenn E.]

I seem to enjoy younger white Ports more than older ones, probably because a lot of the older ones start to taste like tawny Port. Which isn't a bad thing! Except that white Port is generally more expensive than tawny Port, so you might as well save money and just get tawnies for that older flavor profile.

My current summer favorite isn't a "With an Indication of Age" white, though... it's the DR 2008 White Colheita. An amazing Port at a really good price.

But within the category and starting on the younger side, I think the Lamelas 10 Year Old is probably my favorite. Hard to find, but worth it. It's followed closely by the DR and the S. Leonardo. The same brands' 20 Year Olds are also excellent, but I feel that the 10s provide better bang for the buck. I also like Andresen's 20 Year Old white, though not quite as much as the above.

At the 30 level, I like S. Leonardo again and Bulas. Bulas is interesting because they make both dry and sweet white Ports with an indication of age. I prefer the sweet ones, of course, but the dry versions are also very well made.

If you feel like splurging, the DR and S. Leonardo 50 Year Olds are fantastic. The Prelada 50 has a very different character (still tasting like a white, but with a less overtly sweet profile).

And, of course, the S. Leonardo 90 Year Old, which I've also heard referred to as a 1927 Colheita Branco. It's as mind-blowing as the 100 Year Old tawny!

[Eric Ifune]

S. Leonardo 20 yo
Vieira de Sousa 10 yo
Andresen 10 yo

[John M.]

Thanks for the responses...and ideas!!

Anyone else??

[Thomas V]

If we just stick with 10YO whites my personal rankings looks something like this.

1. Quinta das Lamelas. Superb quality for the money
2. Dona Otilla
3. Sao Leonardo
4. Blackett
5. Bulas

At around the same price point I would also look at white colheitas from Dalva, Kopke and Maynard's. The 2003, 2007 and 2008's are all great.

[Will W.]

I largely gave up on white port a couple of years ago, save for Ferreira reserve white. The latter is rubbish on its own though mixes very nicely with a good tonic, lemon and mint. Evidently like Glenn, I came to the conclusion that the prices commanded for white ports with any age were not commensurate with comparable (in terms of age) tawnies. Instead, when the temperature rises I have got to drinking ten- and twenty-year-old Moscatels de Setúbal, old Carcavelos (which is very attractively priced at Portuguese auctions), the young and fresh offerings from Villa Oeiras, and, when I want to spend some money, Ben Ryé from Pantelleria. I enjoy Madeira, but the prices put me off insofar as I do not what I am doing when it comes to making informed buying decisions.

The aforementioned noted, I took some friends to a tasting at Quinta de Santa Eufemia last week. The thirty-year-old white - which I had always preferred to the forty, which the Quinta no longer produces - showed remarkably well. And not least at the mid-palate, where I have tended to find that the Eufemia and other whites come up short absent decades in the shed. I should add that a newly-released Eufemia 2007 colheita eclipsed in my view the otherwise agreeable ten- and twenty-year-old Eufemias - it had buckets of character, comparable to the 2008 Kopke white - and was very attractively priced. As to the rest from the Douro, Lamelas and Mourao have stunning offerings where they come with generations of barrel time, though as noted already in this thread they are not inexpensive.

[Eric Menchen]

I'm kind of Will on this one. I love most of the non-white tawnies, VPs, LBVs, ... And I enjoy the well aged white Ports. But $ for $ (or pick your currency), for white dessert wines I usually prefer Sauternes, Tokaji, SGN, VdP, TBA, ... And from Portugal I've had great Moscatel and Carcavelos that were probably better QPR as well. A white Port-Tonic is nice, but I often make those instead as Port-Tawnic.

[John M.]

Pricing is a surprise. I'm getting Barao de Vilar and Q do Portal for $18 US...$19.25 with VAT for 500ml. So I do not view as too pricey. Still, appreciate all the thoughts here.

Now on the other hand Kopke and Niepoort are over $50!

[Glenn E.]

Pricing is a surprise. I'm getting Barao de Vilar and Q do Portal for $18 US...$19.25 with VAT for 500ml. So I do not view as too pricey. Still, appreciate all the thoughts here.

Now on the other hand Kopke and Niepoort are over $50!

It's all relative. Using winesearcher.com, I see QdP 10yo Tawny in the US for $15 for a 750ml. Whereas a half bottle of their 10yo white is $21.50. Obviously winesearcher isn't a perfect source, but it's generally pretty good.

My experience has been that the older whites and tawnies generally sell for about the same price, but that the whites come in 500ml instead of 750ml. At the young end (10yo or young colheitas) pricing is so wildly variable from producer to producer that it's difficult to make a solid comparison, but my general impression has been that the price difference is still roughly true.

Also, my impressions are probably clouded by the deals we sometimes get, either directly from producers or during one of Roy's buying ops. They're also distorted by our super-high taxes on alcohol here in Washington so I have to be careful to compare state-vs-state when I'm checking.

[Al B.]

Andresen Whites are easy to buy in the UK so the Andresen 10YO White is my go-to drink after working in the garden on a sunny day.

My favourite producer of whites with an indication of age is Quinta das Lamelas, they are just fabulous.

And the best white that’s relatively easy to find is the Kopke 50YO. It’s stunning - but not cheap!

[Moses Botbol]

Kopke, Andresen, Dalva are the three producers that come to mind with any white port.