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

Our white wine started fermenting this morning. It has around 12% potential alcohol and it  should need three or four days to finish the fermentation. Claudia says it is showing up an intense peach flavor. For me is more melon. Come over and help us to find out!

Oscar

Today we have been making white Port Wine. The grapes that we were harvesting during the week-end were transformed into a healthy and aromatic must during the last days, which was ready for the fortification this afternoon. We are considering to follow Andy Velebil’s suggestion, regarding the ageing of our 2009 white Port Wine. He says he loves white colheitas! Thank you Andy for that!  Check the video right in the moment we were adding the brandy! Lot of noise at the winery… sorry!

I have been spending some hours with my sister thinking about what to do with this must. There are some possibilities:
1. Blend some fresh juice to renovate the yeast;
2. add selected yeasts to take control (carry on with the fermentation);
3. feed the yeasts that were still in the vat;
4. or simply leave it like it is.

Well, we decided for the last one, we’ll wait and see how it evolves during the next days!

Oscar