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At Roy's 50th B-day party July 1, 2007

1853 Whitwham’s King Pedro V: Ok, lots of controversy was brought up about this wine, and I mean lots. The discussion was about weather this was really a Colheita from a single year or if it had been “freshened† up with a younger Colheita. It was so much darker and fresher than any Port of its age (or younger) during the whole weekend. And now that I’ve had a lot of older Colheita’s since that time, I am inclined to believe that this may be too good to be true. Yes, it was an outstanding Port and was the wine of the flight, but was it really from only one vintage in 1853???


Extremely dark color. Lots of maple syrup, carmel, hazelnuts, great explosive acidity, tons of structure, big bodied, with an extra long finish. 97-98 points.

Is Whitwam’s a bottler, or did they produce their own ports? If what vineyards’ grapes made the product?

Whitwam's is a UK bottler, whose name often crops up in connection with recorking and rebottling of old ports.

So if they don’t make port, nor blend others’ port, they shouldn’t appear in the TN index under that name. Whitwam’s port is really just “Unknown House†.

While you are strictly correct, the 1853 Dom Pedro is known as "Whitwam's Dom Pedro port".

Note that because none of the documentation required for registering this port with the IVDP, it cannot be called "vintage port" nor "colheita".

So consider this a vote in favour of keeping this on the database as "Whitwam's Dom Pedro Port".

Did Whitwam's become Farr vintners?

Not that I am aware of. However, I am curious to know what information has caused you to make the suggestion?

I had an offer sent to me for this port I think it was from farr's but I could be wrong it said that they found this cask some years ago and bottled it.The price was to expensive so I did not take a great deal of notice.

I was vaguely under the impression that they were still in business, but a spot of Googling revealed nothing - have they merged or folded recently?

Tom

I could be mistaken, but I do think that Whitwhams is still in business.

As to the colour and freshness: is it known in what type of cask this was kept? If it was in a large (10.000 liter) cask instead of a pipa, that would certainly explain why it was so dark. I am not certain what it does to the freshness, but I can imagine the port would remain fresher in a bigger cask. Just a thought.

My understanding is that this was in 2 or 3 regular colheita casks that were found in the back of some producers storage area, long ago since forgotten. Then it was bottled for Whitwhams by Niepoort (sometimes people claim this is a Niepoort, which is not true). The color is nowhere near as pale as it really should be.