For The Love Of Port

I finally got around to tasting the 2009 single varietal sampler set that came from a previous FTLOP buying opportunity. This was a unique and educational experience and only wish Quevedo would offer another sampler set again. I noticed that each bottle had a numerical marking with units of "Be"; I noted the numbers on each wine below. Anyone know what this refers to?

Tinta Cao (1.98 Be)
Medium dark red color, with little signs of maturity. Lots of sweet morello cherries, loganberry and spice. Quite a bit of complexity, with shist and floral notes mixed in; good grippy tannins. A bit of mustiness, which got worse and worse with air. Alas, this was corked, which is too bad, as the underlying material was quite nice.

Sausao (2.7 Be)
Medium ruby, the lightest in color of all the varietals, which surprised me as I thought Sausao was used to add color. This was the only wine to have dropped much sediment, which lined the inside walls of the bottle… which perhaps explained the lightening of pigment. Softer in texture than all the other wines without much grip. Silky, soft, elegant and accessible.

Touriga Nacional (2.18 Be)
Medium dark red. A very complete wine with floral notes (violets?), red fruit compote, minerals, raisins, licorice and plums. Great depth here with layers of flavors. Strong, fine tannins. This could easily stand alone as a very fine port. My favorite, by far.

Touriga Franca (1.98 Be)
The darkest of all the varietals (slightly). This had the most fragrance, with floral notes and black fruit aromas.Blackberry pie, cocao powder… again, lots of black fruits. Another wine that was quite nice on its own. Excellent length and structure.

Touriga Roriz (3.18 Be)
Ungiving on the nose, with more red, rather than black, fruit on the palate. Raspberry, pomegranate, and red cherries. Less tannic, although not lacking in structure, which seemed to come more from the acids rather than the tannins. Pretty, elegant and lifted, with above average length.

It was a shame the Tinta Cao was corked, as it would make for great blending material. All the (non-corked) wines were delicious, and after a few trial blends, I settled on 2/3 TN, 1/3 TF and 1/3 TR as my personal preference.

Be is short for "degrees Baume", the preferred measurement of liquid density in winemaking in Europe (Brix being the common one in the US). Not sure why they put it on the bottle, as its usefulness is usually in regards to seeing how much sugar is in your unfermented juice. The different density of alcohol from water makes it much less useful after fermentation has begun.


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Good notes. And reminds me I have one of these sets left I need to open soon.


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Bradley Bogdan wrote:The different density of alcohol from water makes it much less useful after fermentation has begun.

If you know the starting Baume and the composition of your aguardente, the final Baume can be used to approximate your residual sugar and alcohol levels.

Eric Menchen wrote:

Bradley Bogdan wrote:The different density of alcohol from water makes it much less useful after fermentation has begun.

If you know the starting Baume and the composition of your aguardente, the final Baume can be used to approximate your residual sugar and alcohol levels.

I guess that would make sense. The winemaker who explained it to me (in terms of Brix) basically said after a decent way into the fermentation you run into a game of chicken and egg, where you have two variables (sugar and alcohol) and only know the output. If you've got something to firm up one of the two variables like the aguardente, or something like the Internet to find a set of tables that would tell you what that output means based on your starting Brix, it would make it very useful.

That same winemaker would just periodically toss some of the fermenting juice into an old school ebulliometer and do the math for how many g/L of sugar was left and note such if a fermentation stopped early.