Falstaff Magazin International 01/2021

wine / PORTUGAL Photos:

wine / PORTUGAL Photos: Serge Chapuis 70 falstaff winter 2021

The historic Quinta do Noval with its famous Nacional vineyard is a jewel among quintas in the Douro Valley. Classic Vintage Ports are blends: of different grape varieties on the one hand and from several estates, or quintas, on the other. These quintas stand for the special components they typically add to the final Port blend: the wine of one quinta may provide aroma, another tannic backbone, yet another may bring elegance. These various but clearly defined components achieve the recognisable house style of the various big Port shippers: Taylor’s, Fonseca, Graham’s and so on. Vintage Ports are only made in great years and houses can individually declare a vintage, rather than the region as a whole. In years that are very good but not quite sublime enough for vintage Port, houses can make a vintage-dated Port from a single estate, known as Single Quinta Vintage Ports – these tell us more about place and vintage than about house style and vintage. These Single Quinta Vintage Ports had a revival in the late 1980s. The so-called Carnation Revolution of 1974 ended dictatorship in Portugal, paved the way for democracy and rang in a new entrepreneurial spirit. When Quinta do Infantado declared a Vintage Port in 1978, bottled and stored at the winery directly in the PORTS PRODUCED DIRECTLY ON AND EXCLUSIVELY FROM THE GRAPES OF THE QUINTAS SOON SHOT OUT OF THE UBIQUITOUS SLATE SOILS. Douro growing region, it was celebrated as a new Single Quinta Vintage Port – but it was in fact the renaissance of an old practice. A guideline dating back to 1926 demanded that all Port be shipped from the mountainous inland growing regions of Lower Corgo, Upper Corgo and Upper Douro for ageing in the Port lodges of Vila Nova de Gaia, the city downstream where the Douro runs into the Atlantic. When this obligatory storage was finally abandoned, Vintage Ports soon shot out of the ubiquitous slate soils, produced solely from a single estate and made exclusively from the grapes of that quinta. Among the pioneers were Quinta do Crasto with 1978 and 1982, Quinta da Romaneira with 1986, 1988 from Quinta de la Rosa, and 1989 Quinta do Cõtto. This emergence was a game-changer in the late 1980s – adding a site-specific vintage wine to the great Vintage Port blends. Single Quinta Vintage Ports thus offer a portrait of a vintage and of a particular estate. Here are portraits of some of the best. QUINTA DO NOVAL This quinta, a jewel among Vintage Ports, is the exception that proves the rule. Its wines, first produced in 1715, have been famed for centuries and its Vintage Port is created exclusively from the vineyards of Quinta do Noval – rather than from vineyards across the region. In the best years, Noval also produces strictly limited quantities of the legendary Quinta do Noval Nacional, a Vintage Port made from a single parcel of ungrafted vines in the Nacional vineyard on the estate. 39 vintages including the current 2019 vintage have been produced since 1931, and although not a classic Vintage Port nor a < winter 2021 falstaff 71