For The Love Of Port

I'm sure that anyone who was a subscriber back in 2007 read Roy's multi-part account of the 2006 Harvest Tour.

That tour was my first trip to Portugal, and will forever remained cherished in my memory for the people we met, the life-long friendships that were forged, and of course, the wines we tasted.

Some time ago we converted all of the old Harvest Tour reports over to our new site and, unfortunately, some of the formatting was mangled in the process.

I've finally had an opportunity to go back and piece these articles back together for your reading enjoyment.

As I was putting these back together, I did some quick analysis of the wines and scores from the 2006 Harvest trip and uncovered the following:

We tasted 193 wines (at least based on Roy's notes).

The oldest Ports were:

1890 Ramos Pinto Colheita Port
1937 Ramos Pinto Colheita Port
1952 Dalva White Colheit Port (Tasted Twice)
1962 Quinta do Noval Crusted Port
1963 Quinta do Noval Nacional Vintage Port
1964 Quinta do Noval Nacional Vintage Port
1964 Quinta do Noval Colheita POrt
1970 Dow Vintage Port
1970 Fonseca Vintage Port
1970 Niepoort Colheita Port
1970 Quinta do Crasto Colheita Port
1977 Taylor Fladgate Vintage Port

The Highest Scoring Wines from Roy were:

1963 Quinta do Noval Nacional Vintage Port (99)
1970 Fonseca Vintage Port (97)
1994 Quinta do Vesuvion Vintage Port (97)
2000 Quinta do Noval Nacional Vintage Port (97)
2003 Niepoort Vintage Port (97)
2003 Croft Vintage Port (96)
2003 Quinta do Noval Vintage Port (96)
2003 Quinta do Noval Nacional Vintage Port (96)
2003 Qunita do Vesuvio Vintage Port (96)
2004 Quinta do Crasto vinha da Ponte Douro Red (96)
2004 Warre's Quinta da Cavadinha Vintage Port (96)

We all had magical moments. Despite the amazing Noval Nacionals we consumed with Christian Seely at Quinta do Noval, my personal favorite was tasting an amazing vertical of all of the Vintage Ports produced at Quinta do Vesuvio since the Symington's acquired the property, with Rupert Symington leading the tasting. That wonderful tasting was following by donning shorts and flannel shirts and stepping into my first lagare to help crush what has become the Quinta do Vesuvio 2006 Vintage Port.

For those that were on the trip, I hope you enjoy re-living the amazing adventure. For others, I hope this report will give you some insight into the amazing and unique experiences that Roy puts together year after year and I hope others will get a chance to join him on one of his future trips.

Here is a link to the 2006 Harvest Tour report - hope you all enjoy!

http://www.fortheloveofport.com/harvest ... our-part-1

Wow, did that bring back some memories. It was a fantastic trip and there were some good friendships made, sitting up till the wee hours chatting and drinking from the left over bottles. Only to get a few hours sleep and start it all over again the next day.

Vesuvio always holds a special spot in my heart and it's one of my favorite Quinta's to visit. Like Stewart, it was also the first time I'd ever set foot in a lagar and we were luckily enough to tread the grapes with all the other workers for about an hour. But sitting on the veranda with Rupert leading our vertical* was, and still is, one of my all time favorite days in the Douro. I see why Donna Antonio A. Ferreira loved the place so much, there is something magical that happens when you arrive there.

*I must give credit to a man, who I don't think wants to be named, but deserves credit none-the-less for helping that vertical happen

Yes, this was a truly amazing trip. What an amazing time... from Noval to Crasto to Ramos Pinto to Vargellas to Vesuvio. Not to mention the lunch with Sandra Tavares and Cristiano Van Zellar that consisted of partidge that he had shot the day before. Wow!

You can see photos from that trip here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dspriggs/c ... 492534216/

WOW! - What a trip down Memory Lane that was

Without wishing to denegrate any of Roy's tours since or in the future, I do think that the 2006 Harvest Tour will be very hard, if not impossible, to beat. When Alex and I arrived at Crasto in the twilight of that warm autumn evening, scared half to death at the antics of our taxi driver who had transported us from the airport in a manner that I will never care to see repeated, we met a fantastic group of people, most of whom we have now developed very close friendships with in the years that have followed.

I have been to the Douro many times since that trip and none of those visits has come close to this first venture into the Douro in terms of establishing new friendships and contacts with the people who make the purple nectar that we all enjoy so much.

I will forever be proud to say that I was there on the 2006 Harvest Tour - certainly one of the best experiences of my life

thanks for bringing it back to life, Stewart

Derek