How Many Grapes are there in a Bottle of Port?

Posted by
May 22, 2009

Touriga Nacional vine from Quinta da TroviscaThis is simple Port mathematics! Let´s do it step by step: Port wine is 80% the best must from the Douro and 20% brandy; a bottle of 0.75L of wine requires roughly 1 kg of grapes, whereas brandy, a distilled drink, is much more demanding: 7 kg per liter!

Well, imagine a bottle of 0,75 lt; it contains something like (80% * 1 + 20% * 7)Kg of grapes: that’s 2.2 Kg! The average weight of a Touriga Nacional grape from Quinta Vale d’Agodinho (25 years old vines at an altitude of 250mt) is 1.95 grs. Thus, we need 410 grapes of Touriga Nacional from Quinta Vale d’Agodinho and more 718 grapes for the production of the brandy. 1.128 is the unimaginable number of grapes together for our pleasure in a bottle of Quevedo.

But when we are talking about Port, quantifying is irrelevant. Just enjoy!

Cheers,

Pedro

Winemaking

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  • http://joseeduardo.wordpress.com/ José Eduardo

    Dear Pedro,

    Your maths really caught my eyes. Congratulations on the wonderful post.

  • http://www.fortheloveofport.com/ Andy Velebil

    Interesting numbers,

    So how does that translate into how many bottles of Port can be produced from an average vine at Q. Vale d’Agodinho?

    • Anonymous

      Andy, I will help Pedro with these numbers!!!

      - Quinta Vale d’Agodinho (QVA) has around 50,000 vines
      - it has an average production of 90 pipas, this is 67.5 tones, or 1.35 kg per vine
      - with 1.35 kg we can make around 1 liter of must
      - a bottle of Port has 80% of must and 20% of brandy
      - the brandy is not made with grapes from the QVA but obtained externally
      - so a vine at QVA can produce an average of 1.67 bottles of Port, excluding the brandy!

      Not much… these ladies think they are nobles…

      • Andy Velebil

        Oscar, thanks for the info.

  • Pedro Domingues

    Hi there, nice blog! We were wondering if you could hel us…
    We are 4 students of the School of Economics and Management (UCP Lisbon) conducting our MSc. Dissertation.
    An important part of our work will be based on a Survey involving 400 UK consumers. In it, we ask questions about wine, in particular about Port Wine.
    This is the survey address:
    http://www.questionpro.com/akira/TakeSurvey?id=1243620

    We would really appreciate it if you would participate it, and if possible, mention it.
    Thank you. Pedro