Port and the Douro by Richard Mayson

Author:Richard Mayson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Infinite Ideas Ltd

Garrafeira

The term garrafeira meaning ‘private wine cellar’ or ‘private reserve’ is usually associated with Portuguese light wines rather than Port. Until 2002 it did not form part of the IVDP’s official lexicon and, as far as I am aware, has only been used by one shipper, Niepoort, to designate a unique style of Port. Under the legislation, wines from a single year are aged for at least seven years in wood before spending a minimum of eight years in glass demi-johns (known colloquially as bon-bons). In practice the wines age for considerably longer than the minimum. After twenty, thirty, even forty years or more in glass, the wine is decanted off its sediment and rebottled in conventional 75cl bottles. For example, Niepoort’s 1967 Garrafeira was ‘bottled’ (i.e. put into 5- or 10-litre glass demi-johns) in 1972 and ‘decanted’ (i.e. bottled) in 1981. Garrafeira wines combine the oxidative character and complexity of tawny with the more reductive bottle-ageing of vintage Port. These unusual wines are the only ones to bridge the gap between wood-matured Port and bottle-matured in terms of weight and style. An undeclared 1945 Cockburn tasted in 2012 technically qualifies as a garrafeira having been decanted from a demi-john into bottles in 1972.

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