Are you one of those un-woke wine lovers who still think vintage port is for fusty types to sip on while harrumphing in cobwebbed club chairs? Please get over yourself in time to buy some bottles of the best vintage in years, arriving soon at retailers.

Trust me. The 2016 vintage ports are glorious, as I discovered a couple of weeks ago, when a bevy of port producers stopped in New York on a worldwide marketing tour.

Fortified with a dollop of brandy, these rich, slightly sweet reds from northern Portugal combine aromas of violets and wild herbs with intense flavors of ripe, plummy fruit and a texture so smooth and velvety you can’t resist rolling it around on your tongue. The 2016s have all this and an added element of savory freshness.

The received wisdom is that port wines have to be aged 20 to 40 years to smooth out tannins and weave flavors together, a problem in this instant-gratification world. But the 2016s have such impressive balance, pure luscious fruit, and polished tannins that you might find it hard to lock them away for decades. Better yet, you won’t have to. They’re yummy right now and will only get better with just a few years of aging.

“It’s one of the thrilling vintages,” enthuses Christian Seely, the managing director of Axa Millesimes, which owns one of the most famous Port houses, Quinta do Noval.

Excitement about the vintage started in mid-April, when all the major port houses “declared” 2016 a Vintage Port year. There’s no formal rule to declaring a vintage—any individual producer can declare a vintage port in any year—but when all the major producers do so in a “general declaration,” it indicates a year of truly high quality. That’s happened only 11 times over the past 40 years, with the most recent being the 2011s. 

There’s a self-limiting aspect to this, too. As Rupert Symington, whose family owns 26 quintas (wine farms) in the Douro, says, “When we release [a vintage port], it tends to make a splash.”

Smaller Harvest, Higher Quality
What shaped the fresh, luscious character of the 2016s was difficult weather. High winter rainfall, a cold, wet spring with three times the average precipitation, and an exceptionally hot summer (109 F!) was then followed by mid-September rain. Then ideal weather arrived that lasted into October. The combination resulted in balanced, perfectly ripe grapes with fresh acidity. And the long, late harvest with cool nights contributed to the wines’ purity of fruit. With about a 20 percent to 30 percent smaller crop than in 2011, prices have risen as a result.

About half the vineyard land in Portugal’s Douro Valley is devoted to grapes for port, which comes in a half-dozen styles, from white port to basic ruby to premium ports such as tawny, which is aged for decades in barrels and has surged in popularity in the U.S. over the past 10 years.

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