Port Wine4947613

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This is a quick lesson on Port Wine. It covers what is port wine and the various styles of port wine. Port Wine only comes from Portugal, if someone try to offer you port wine from any other country stay away from it, it's not the real deal. Port Wine gets its name from a coastal city called Oporto, there port wine started to get shipped to England, the first great consumer of port. The wine region where the grapes intended for port are grown is actually the most expensive one to farm... Port wine's characteristics distinguish it from common wines. All varieties of Port have rich, intense, and very persistent aromas and flavour, with high alcohol content (usually between 19% and 22% vol.). They exist in a variety of sweetness and colours. In order to identify the several types of Port, some designations are used.

Vintage Port Wine

Vintage is an excellent quality wine made up of one single harvest. It is considered the king of Port wines, representing only a small percentage of the total production of Port. It is bottled between the 1st July of the second year and the 31st December of the third year after harvesting. Although it can be immediately consumed, it is usually kept in ageing cellars for a period that can last up to 40 years. It is a very dark, full bodied red wine that becomes softer after ageing in bottle.Single-Quinta is a wine that undergoes the same production process as a vintage, but comes from a single farm (big companies considered that the year was not enough to qualify a wine as vintage). In Portugal, IVDP (Instituto dos Vinhos do Douro e Porto - Port and Douro Wines Institute) is the entity responsible for recognising and classifying Port wines as "vintage".

Ruby Port

Wine whose colour resembles that of the precious stone called ruby. This happens because the ageing process has little or no oxidation (usually up to three years in wooden barrels). It is a young, full bodied wine rich in fruity aromas.

Ruby Reserve

This category is applicable to Tawny and Ruby wines. Ruby Reserva are more aromatic, fruity and have a more complex structure than Ruby. The blends used in the production of Ruby Reserva undergo a more careful selection than the ones used in the Ruby category.

Tawny Port

Port wine obtained from blends of, usually, 3 year-old wines aged in wine seasoned casks. This way, they don't present the characteritsics of oak ageing. During the ageing process several rackings are performed in order to force oxidation and endow the wine with a golden colour.

Late Bottled Vintage

Good quality Port wine with good ageing potential. It has a harvest date and is usually obtained from a blend of wines from that harvest. Its ageing takes place in large vats, oak tuns or stainless steel tanks in order for the oxidative evolution to be extremely slow. LBV is bottled between the 31st July of the fourth year and the 31st December of the sixth year after harvest. In the Late Bottled Vintage category one also finds the "Envelhecido em garrafa" or Bottle Matured Port. This is a high quality Port that ages in bottle for, at least, three years and can thus create a deposit.

Rose Port

Rose is the most recent innovation in the Port Wine world. It's a fresh, smooth and versatile Porto wine. The pink color is obtained by maceration of very intense red grapes and the process excludes oxidation during its storage.

White Port

White Ports differ from each other's in sweetness and ageing period. The youngest Ports are normally drunk in the beginning of meals. The oldest ones have longest ageing periods and intense flavors and should be drunk at dessert. According to sweetness level white Port has four categories: Extra Seco, Seco, Doce and Lagrima.

Detailed info on sweet wine can be found on the main website.