For The Love Of Port

My apologies if this is a dumb question, but I am still a neophyte at this. Since I plan to uncork this wine on my birthday on Monday Dec 22, I expect someone will ask it. If my understanding is right, this wine spent 10 years in cask prior to bottling, half the time of a normal vintage madeira. But, is there any way of determining when this wine may have been harvested, and how much time may have elapsed since bottling? The bottom line is I would like to try to find out if possible roughly when this wine began its process of development - I am assuming it was not harvested in 1997, and bottled in 2007.

Thanks,
Ray

Ray,

My understanding is that the "age indicated" Madeiras are similar to, but not exactly like, "age indicated" Ports. They are blends and not single vintages, but in the case of Madeira a 10-yr Old means that all of the wines blended in that bottle are at least 10 years old.

I believe that for Port it is only an indication of the intended flavor profile and is often mistakenly believed to indicate the minimum average age of the wines blended in that bottle. I believe that it usually does indicate the minimum average age, but it's actually not a requirement.

Hopefully someone with more knowledge on the subject will confirm that for you, or correct me if I'm wrong.

Glenn E. wrote:They are blends and not single vintages, but in the case of Madeira a 10-yr Old means that all of the wines blended in that bottle are at least 10 years old.

Usually the producing company takes a number 3 to 5 wines as a base for the blend, then does some fine tuning with small amounts of older wines and sweet or dry wines to adjust the sweetness. Then finally the rest of the last batch (10 to 15% of the total volume of the new batch) is added to asure the taste remains consistent. Most of the producers also use the 15% of Tinta Negra Mole in their varietal blends, since this helps reducing production costs.
All the wines in a 10YO blend will have a minimum age of 10 years. But since the wines come from different harvests, of course there is no telling what the "main" vintage was.
Best
Peter

Thank you Peter I will keep this in mind when I am hopefully serving this again tomorrow (in case anyone makes it through the 6+ inches of snow).

Cheers,
Ray