You are right, the mouth of this 14,000 liter balseiro is open. It is not that often that we rack our old Ports. This is the balseiro where our Colheita 1994 has aged for several years. But now it’s time for it to go to smaller containers. It will age in 605 - 615 liters pipas, some older than anyone of us, while others no more than 10 years old.

Why did we decided to change? While aging in balseiros, the Port will have little contact with oak, as the area per volume of contact is reduced. But if we switch it for pipos, Port will be more influenced by the oak. The fruity flavours conserve longer if the Port is aged in bigger containers but smaller containers will help the wine to reach elegance, nut flavors and sometimes chocolate. And this is the way my sister Claudia and me thought the Colheita 1994 should develop to. On the other hand, Colheita 1996 reached such a balance between fruit and oxidation in these same pipos, that we would like our 1994 Colheita to inherit it too.

We have bottled 3,000 bottles of 1996 Colheita few weeks ago, while for the 1994 we put apart 2,800 liters, to be bottled in the next weeks. No more bottling of any of these wines is planned for the next 12 months. These bottles have to be enough for all of us!

Oscar

We all know that Port Wine is about blending: different vineyards, pipes, vintages and off course, different varietals. All this with the purpose of having a more complex and harmonious blend. The vineyards of the Douro are planted, since many years ago with a different range of varietals, some well known but others barely recognized. In total we have 80+ varietals in the Douro.

Last harvest I defied my sister Claudia to make a single varietal Port out of 5 different varietal blocks planted in our vineyards. Four of those varietals come from Quinta da Trovisca (Sousão, Touriga Franca, Touriga Nacional and Tinta Roriz) while the other varietal - Tinto Cão - is planted in a terrace we have in Quinta Vale d’Agodinho. With the help of my friends from the University we dedicated a week-end to collect and tread these grapes. Funny time we had!

Now it is time to evaluate the experiment and to get some conclusions:

#1 - 9 months is nothing when we are talking about Port; any conclusion now is subject to further revision
#2 - Sousão is like that good friend we have far away but that we are sure he will go with us for the rest of our lives; he is not always present, but he’s there when we need him
#3 - Touriga Franca is the team-player, alone doesn’t stand out, but with some collaboration from the other players it organizes and gets the best of all of them
#4 - Touriga Nacional is the cherry on the top of the cake: the pastry could be excellent but the cherry makes it special
#5 - Tinta Roriz is like our mum, she gives us a little bit of all everything we need
#6 - Tinto Cão is like a Madam, likes to wear elegant flower dresses, but can catch a cold with any breeze of oxygen
#7 - No one of these single varietals is good enough to perform a show alone; but with some inspiration we could make a nice orchestra, which in some years may perform a great show
#8 - Blending is fun and you learn a lot; really…

Come over and make your blend!

Oscar

Before you ask, I’ll explain what is the photo showing: it is the bottom of a 10.000 liters bin where one of the components of Oscar’s 2009 was resting since November. After aging for some months, this wine created a compact cover of sediment, which this year is specially bigger due to two facts: very cold Winter (resulting in more and denser precipitation) and high level of anthocyans (pigmentation substances responsible for the color) in the grapes of the last harvest.

It is interesting to compare this photo, of a still red wine, with other of a Rose Port, where the bottom of the bin is covered by a much thinner and pink layer. Different levels of extraction lead to different types of sediment!

Oscar

I think 2009 Ports will age quite quickly due to some lack of acidity. I am really looking forward to see how they resist to their first Winter. There were two of these 8 Ports that I liked very much. And guess what? Do you remember the doubts, questions and stress we had from the Port fermenting in the Vat #1? This was my second best Port from 2009!!! At that time, we could not really control the fermentation of this Port. It was made by itself!

Next week is time for White and Rose Port!

Oscar

Honestly I don’t really know how are the Touriga Nacional, Touriga Franca, Sousão, Tinto Cão and Tinta Roriz Ports aging. They are already in 250 liters barrels and after Christmas we will make the first tasting. Any volunteers to help us? Meanwhile, I asked  my friends to share with us what they expect from the Port they helped to make. Here are some comments of the different teams:

Elisabete Pereira from Sousão team:

The whole experience was great. In other years, we were only able to see the beginning of the harvest, but this year we saw the complete process from the cleaning of the boxes for the harvest to the manual crushing of the grapes. Now we really know what it takes to create a wonderful Quevedo Port from excellent grapes, collected carefully by four women and made only from Sousão grapes. Now it only needs many years of rest to get a unique taste. The Sousão team really recommends the experience to anyone willing to spend a nice, relaxing, and different weekend!!

Marta Palmeira from Touriga Franca team:

632 kg of grapes will result in the best Port wine made from Touriga Franca in recent years. The fermentation time was the best of the five single-varietal. The brandy also helped. But the real flavour will come from the work of six busy hands not used to this work, and the slow and tired pace of the legs and feet of Dani, António, pequena Sara and myself. Next year we will taste it. And we’ll enjoy it for sure! Cheers

Diana, Ervilha, Manjas e Pedro from Tinta Roriz team:

Tinta Roriz, seven lines and a half
The grapes of Tinta Roriz were harvested by three and a half people, as one of us brought a baby in the womb. Maybe with this in his mind, Oscar gave us a varietal with huge bunches, plenty of taste, which we filled up in not even one hour; after that we helped Sousão and Touriga Franca teams, which were debating with lack of grapes and some laziness.

When we arrived at the winery, after lunch, we cleared the boxes and moved the grapes to the machine that takes the stem out, after that we put the must in a container which we filled up up to the knees level. In the meantime we went for the traditional dive in the Douro river and we came back after dinner to tread the grapes few hours before we had harvested. Within one year we will make a toast!

During the last weekend it took place in Lisbon the second edition of the European Wine Bloggers Conference. As it had happened last year, I had a lot of fun, I met bunches of new people and drunk many many Portuguese wines. Later this week I’ll make another post with my thoughts about the the conference.

What I want to show you now is the video I made while visiting Amorim’s (biggest cork producer) factory in Coruche, where I learnt a bit more of TCA problem. A little percentage of bottles with natural cork will always have TCA taste. TCA is everywhere, in beer, water, plastic, fruits and though it can be controlled, it can’t be eliminated. So Quevedo will continue to have some corked bottles. Yes, we will. I know these are bad news but we prefer to have between 2% to 3% of our bottles corked than using plastic corks, more pollutant and lacking capacity for aging our wines. Something crucial for Port!

But this is me, and I had already talked about cork for Port last year. What you think about using natural cork, plastic cork or screw caps in your preferred wines?

Oscar

1. To swim in the Douro river against the flow, towards its source in Duruelo de la Sierra, Spain
2. To sail in the Douro, rowing on empty barrels from Ferradosa to the outlet in Porto
3. To run the Cima-Corgo marathon from S. João da Pesqueira to Pocinho
4. To prune 100 vines with our teeth
5. To defy S. Joao da Pesqueira’s #1 dominoes player for a duel out of seven matches
6. To practice “scuba diving” in the wine bins to control the fermentation process
7. To take L’amour (our mighty dog) out for a walk in the center of Pesqueira without a muzzle
8. To plant an hectare of vines with a hoe and a spade
9. To tow the train of the 3pm from Pinhão to Alegria with two friends
10. And this one’s for you to fill…. what do you suggest?

Top 9 elaborated by Joana, António and Pedro

Today I met Godfrey Spence, a leading British wine educator, in the Douro. We talked for a couple of hours about Douro, Port and a little bit of everything. It was a very interesting chat. A big pleasure for me. At the end I asked him to share with us what he thinks about the harvest 2009. Please watch this short video with his Godfrey’s comments.

Oscar

All the grapes were harvested last Saturday, September 26th by my friends from the University in Quinta da Trovisca. Each year, they come over to help us on multiple tasks. This year we decided to make something different and they were amazing taking this project over and without them it would have been quite difficult to succeed.

How did it work? We created five different groups,: Touriga Nacional, Tinto Cão, Touriga Franca, Tinta Roriz and Sousão. Each group with 3 or four participants, responsible for the harvest, crush and tread of the grapes.

Now the fermentation of all the varietals has already been stopped. The musts are fortified and by tomorrow we should move it to 250 litters barrels, where they will age for a few years (we don’t know exactly for how much). Probably they will be bottled.

We started this idea for fun and to develop and enrich the community’s knowledge about Port. So if you are hanging out around, stop by us and we will show you this experiment.

Oscar

Although this rain is coming a little bit early and is concerning us, the most important grapes were already collected. So the best wines should not be affected by these drops. The rain can’t be an excuse for its quality!

It is now raining but hopefully by tomorrow morning we can leave our houses and accomplish our mission: to bring grapes to the winery!

Oscar