Maybe you haven’t tasted Port for years, or maybe it’s something that you regularly pair with a roaring fire in the den during the winter months while awaiting warmer days to come. Or maybe you’re somewhere in between those extremes. A recent round of tasting of examples from Kopke—the oldest Port house in existence—got me thinking about the famous fortified wine in a new way. Not knowing where you are situated along this continuum, and avoiding sweeping generalizations, I’ll share my own experience with a guess that you may have had a similar journey to finding enjoyment of Port wine. I’ll also look at a few possibilities for enjoying these wines that you may not yet have considered.
I had my first experiences with wine in the early 1980s. I distinctly remember a frosted bottle of rosé with a handle that we used to pair with sunset around a fire pit at the beach, and I also remember domestic port-style wines making regular appearances around the fire. Let’s just say being a California boy that was raised on soda likely influenced an early attraction to sweeter wines.
Fast forward to the mid- to late-1980s, when more exposure to better food led to drier wine preferences, leaving the sweeter wines in the background, with rare exposures to a friend’s treasured old bottle of Porto – the real deal from its ancestral home. The 1963 Fonseca and the 1970 Dow’s were particularly memorable bottles. Today, I’ve progressed all the way to owning Port tongs (which provide a geeky but fun and effective way of cracking the top off the neck of old vintage port bottles to avoid stirring up sediment before decanting).
A 2023 trip to Portugal included a day-long side trip in a rental car to the Douro Valley where the grapes for Porto are grown, mostly just to get a glimpse and understand why everyone raves about the beauty of the region. That glimpse resulted in a vow to return for deeper exploration in the future. I’ll keep that vow before long—though for now I’m limited to conducting research remotely.
Most recently, I benefitted from a serendipitous contact with the oldest producer of Port—including an offer of a range of samples. Yes, please!
My esteemed WRO colleague Marguerite Thomas wrote a blog post on the house of Kopke in August of 2023, so I won’t rehash that here other than to say that being in the business since the year 1638 is a pretty good indication that things are being done sustainably—in more ways than one.
Winemaker Carla Tiago walked me through five different Kopke offerings via Zoom. During the course of that tasting and talk, I started thinking about usage and pairing possibilities that may extend beyond traditional ways of enjoying Porto. I’ll offer a couple of usage ideas after a quick rundown of some basics regarding a few of the many types of Porto.
“20 Years-Old Tawny Porto” offerings, whether red or white, are built to show a house style that is consistent across successive releases. The “20-Year” designation is potentially a bit misleading. It really refers to style rather than to the age of all the wine in a finished bottle, as the wines are multi-vintage blends composed by a solera method resulting in an average age of 20 years. The blending is performed by winemakers with the objective of yielding a consistent “house style,” as I just noted.
As in Champagne, blending wines from grapes grown during multiple years is definitely not a negative. It enables buyers to secure bottles that will show closely similar aromas and flavors regardless of when they make a purchase. Kopke bottles all their multi-year offerings on demand, thereby offering the freshest and most representative bottles to the market. No further maturation occurs after bottling, and indeed the wines will begin to degrade, albeit very slowly due to the fact that they have already been exposed to oxygen for many years.
Once opened, aged tawnies can show beautifully for months. That span will be lengthened by refrigeration, which greatly slows degradation. If you do keep bottles in your refrigerator, experimentation will enable you to learn how long you prefer to let a glass warm at room temperature after pouring. At colder temperatures, the component of fortifying spirit is minimized in sensory impact, but so too are aromatic complexities.
Kopke, Porto (Portugal) 20 Years Old Tawny NV ($75): This has a freshness that many tawnies that I taste are lacking, with a brightness of fruit that dances with the nutty wood tones that can overwhelm the fruit character if mishandled. Made from the varieties traditional to the region, it carries black and red fruit character contrasted with nutty notes and a soft green undertone that deepens both the nut and the fruit accents and finishes with a hint of lightly roasted coffee. I’d go for a fine cigar with this, but of course there are plenty of other possibilities. 93
Kopke, Porto (Portugal) Port 20 Years Old White NV ($64): If you’re not familiar with White Port, think of this example along the lines of a Madeira with an attractive combination of sweet fig and black walnut character. The wine isn’t sticky sweet at all, leaning more toward its nutty character and finishing persistently with the walnut lingering pleasantly. While cheese and dried fruits are a natural pairing here, you could shake things up by pairing with spicy Thai or Mexican cuisine, or literally shake it up as a complexifying addition to a cocktail. 93
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Colheita translates literally as “harvest,” but a bottle labeled Colheita can be thought of as vintage tawny or a “single harvest” Porto, meaning that a 2005 Colheita is 100% a twenty-year-old tawny from the listed vintage. Colheita rules say that the wine can be bottled after seven years in barrel, but Kopke first bottles their Colheita releases after closer to ten years in barrel. They currently carry Colheita wines going back to 1934, and as these are also bottled on demand, you can only imagine what sort of aromas and flavors might lurk in a wine nearing 100 years in a barrel. Colheita bottles will bear a bottling date, and both examples below were bottled in 2024:
Kopke, Porto (Portugal) Port Colheita 2005 ($59): Since all of this wine was in barrel for twenty years, you’d expect a little more wood character to show than in the multi vintage 20-year tawny, and you’d be correct. A pleasant vanilla note adds a roundness to the mid palate and brightens the fruit character, softening the nut tones and keeping the red fruit pushing through the finish. If you prefer your tawny with less nut tone and less tannic edge, this is a fine choice. There’s a delicacy here that medium strength cheeses will sing with. 94
Kopke, Porto (Portugal) White Port Colheita 2005 ($83): This is a beauty. You won’t be tipped off that this is a Port until the nut tone comes forward in the finish. Prior to that, it presents like an aged late harvest dessert wine, with racy acidity propping up apricot and spiced pear fruit notes. The acidity tames the sweetness, and the nut character sweeps away any lingering sugar and invites you back for more. This is a great solo dessert, or you could be daring and try it with a brown or green molé on chicken enchiladas. 94
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Finally, Vintage Port. These are made with only two years of aging in barrel (usually neutral wood) prior to bottling with an eye on long term aging potential, and they can indeed become otherworldly liquids after long bottle aging when sourced from the best vintages. Kopke uses all hand harvesting, in-vineyard selection (picking only the best clusters), relatively high temperatures during fermentation for full extraction of aromatics and flavors, fortification with a neutral, grape-based spirit approved by the Port Institute, and gentle bladder pressing prior to bottling. Aging for the two years prior to bottling takes place partially in neutral oak and partially in stainless steel to preserve vibrancy of fruit character.
Kopke, Porto (Portugal) Vintage Port “Quinta S. Luiz” 2022 ($80): Call me crazy, but as good as well-aged Vintage Port can be, I really enjoy tasting these wines upon release. There’s a power and weight that’s unique to early release Vintage offerings, and that’s on full display here. This offering from a “single Quinta” (meaning, essentially, farm or vintage) includes about 35% Touriga Nacional for fruit-forward brightness, with the remaining 65% comprised of multiple varieties from a traditional field blend. Deep, sweet blackberry and cassis fruit aromas are complemented with accents of orange zest, nutmeg and wildflowers, and the fruit and spice notes translate to bold palate flavors that aren’t perceived as overtly sweet thanks to laser-focused acidity. If you can, buy a few bottles to age, but open one now. This could certainly work with a steak smothered with caramelized onions as well as a more traditional pairing such as Stilton cheese with walnuts. 95
Additionally, I’ve got an older bottle of Kopke’s Vintage Port in transit, and will report back on it here as soon as it arrives. My experience so far with the line is certainly worthy of a high recommendation.
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If you’ve got some older Vintage Port kicking around your cellar that you haven’t thought about in a while, I hope this rundown will prompt you to open it up for a treat. If trying fine vintage or aged tawny port will be a new extension from your enjoyment of wine, I hope this might kick-start you toward an introduction to a drink that’s been treasured for centuries. Getting started is actually quite easy, as tawnies have been pre-aged for you, and vintage ports from past vintages are stocked at wine retailers around the world. If prices for recently bottled Ports rise for USA buyers due to tariffs, current stocks may decline fairly rapidly, so buying soon may be advisable.
Saúde!