Gold by International Wine Challenge!
Colheita ports are single vintage tawny ports, meaning that they have been aged in cask before being bottled. The 1977 is one such example. Moving from 10,000l toneis to 600l casks has, for Alvaro, polished this wine which they bottle on demand. A good bit of the 1977 this year, it being 40 years old. Anniversary anyone? TBH this is a no-excuses-needed wine. From a great, generally declared year, its intensity and phenomenal length is unsurprising. But it’s the elegance, purity and precision which really elevate this single vintage Tawny Port to the top of the class. It has remarkable delicacy and freshness to its toasted almond and barley sugar palate, building a deeper, nuttier resonance going through.
 
In a nutshell, Colheita Port is a single vintage-dated Tawny Port. It is similar to Tawny Port in production, appearance and flavor, but the key difference is that Colheita is the product of a single vintage and can therefore show considerable variation from year to year. Colheita is aged in wood for at least seven years, giving it a nutty, oxidized character. Although legally required to spend seven years in a barrel, it often spends as long as 20 years. During this time, the wine undergoes oxidative aging, making it closer in style to Aged Tawny than any other Port style.The word colheita is Portuguese for "harvest" or "vintage", but it is stylistically quite different from Vintage Port, which is typically more robust and barrel-aged for no more than a few years. The same process as Vintage Port is required for a Colheita year to be "declared". Samples are submitted to the Institute of Douro and Porto Wine in January, two years after harvest and after quality assessment, vintage declarations are made by the institute at the end of June. Both the vintage year and the date of bottling are included on front and back labels respectively, and should serve as a consumption guide.