Vintage Port, Douro
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Description and Reviews:
The 2021 Vintage marks the eleventh consecutive Vintage Port release from Quinta do Noval, in line with their long-held belief that the quality of the vintage, not the market, should be the only determining factor in whether a Vintage Port is made.
Quinta do Noval Vintage Port is characterised by its purity of fruit and a fine, delicate quality that is typical of the wines of the property in general, but which finds its most remarkable and enduring expression in the Vintage Ports.
Equilibrium, harmony, finesse and elegance characterise our great Vintage Ports, which are declared only when we are certain that the year has produced a blend, however small, that is worthy of bearing the name of Quinta do Noval Vintage Port.
Noval follows its own path in its approach to Vintage Port. If we believe that we have wines of the quality and personality to join the ranks of the Quinta do Noval Vintage Ports of previous years, we will bottle it and declare it, even if this means declaring several years in a row, and even if it means, as is often the case, bottling only a few hundred cases of Quinta do Noval Vintage Port, representing a tiny percentage of the total production of the Quinta.
Of course, in very great years, when there is unanimity among Port producers, and a General Declaration results, Quinta do Noval will declare its wine also, and perhaps with a little more wine than usual. But whatever the year, the standards of selection in the Noval tasting room are extremely rigorous, and even in the more generous years volumes of our Vintage Ports are always extremely small: at the very most, up to 15% of the production of our great vineyard terroir.
Weather conditions in 2021 were in stark contrast to those of the preceding year. A wet winter and regular rainfall in the month of April fully replenished much needed water levels in the soil. An early flowering in May was followed by a very hot month of June, with some stormy periods and hail, which fortunately did not affect our vineyards.
July and August were mild and sunny, with none of the extreme heat or water stress that we have seen in some recent years during these months. This permitted slow homogenous ripening of the grapes, in excellent conditions. We began to harvest the red grapes on 26th August. After some rainfall in early September, we suspended the harvest for three days and then resumed in sunny weather with mild temperatures that permitted steady positive phenolic development right through to the end of the harvest on 8th October. There were no spikes in sugar readings, which enabled us to wait for optimum ripeness in each plot.
