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What causes port to lose opacity? Is it heat damage, or maybe a bad cork, or something else?

A week or so ago I opened a bottle of '83 Dow that seemed relatively opaque compared to a '77 Dow that I had a month or so ago, but neither was anything close to the inky purple of the '83 Smith-Woodhouse tha I opened a couple hours ago. After two hours in the decanter, the Smith-Woodhouse is already better than either bottle of Dow.

Note this thread.

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=6753

There are all kinds of reasons why port might lose its opacity, some good and some bad. Good reasons include the tannins and colour compounds polymerising and dropping out of the liquid as sediment. This part of the aging process that produces the complexity of vintage port. The amount of sediment varies depending on the specific types of grapes used in the vintage blend by a shipper in a particular year.

Bad reasons can include damage to the contents of the bottle through exposure to excessive heat or light. This tends to produce a pale coloured wine with little fruit.

But what you've experienced could well be the normal variation between ports and a preference for one particular house style over another!

AHB wrote:There are all kinds of reasons why port might lose its opacity, some good and some bad. Good reasons include the tannins and colour compounds polymerising and dropping out of the liquid as sediment. This part of the aging process that produces the complexity of vintage port. The amount of sediment varies depending on the specific types of grapes used in the vintage blend by a shipper in a particular year.

Bad reasons can include damage to the contents of the bottle through exposure to excessive heat or light. This tends to produce a pale coloured wine with little fruit.

But what you've experienced could well be the normal variation between ports and a preference for one particular house style over another!

And to add to this...the types of grapes and their percentage used. Smith Woodhouse is known for holding it's color a long time. IIRC being told a certain type of grape is in higher percentage in this. What that grape was has slipped my mind at the moment...anyone recall?

g-man wrote:Note this thread.

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=6753

Noted. What does "baga-esque" mean?
It would be unhelpful to say "resembling or having properties of 'baga.'"

AHB wrote: Bad reasons can include damage to the contents of the bottle through exposure to excessive heat or light. This tends to produce a pale coloured wine with little fruit.

I think that was what happened to the Dow. I've had other bottles of Dow from the same years that had a much richer taste to go with the richer color. The last couple bottles have just been thin all around.

JAC wrote:What does "baga-esque" mean?
It would be unhelpful to say "resembling or having properties of 'baga.'"

Baga is a term used to describe juice of the elderberry. For many, many decades it has been illegal to use elderberry juice in Port but that didn't stop some unscrupulous wine makers using it to make their young wines look very dark. Some don't mind having this substance in their Port, but I do. The colour is unnaturally dark, giving a false impression of youthfulness to old VP, and it just shouldn't be in there. The practice seems to have died out since the early 1980s when almost all of the big shippers ceased buying young Port from small farmers and only using grapes from their own properties or buying the grapes rather than the juice.

DRT wrote:The practice seems to have died out since the early 1980s when almost all of the big shippers ceased buying young Port from small farmers and only using grapes from their own properties or buying the grapes rather than the juice.

To be more precise, they started testing all the finished Port they get from small producers and reject any that have a certain chemical analysis that shouldn't show up in pure Port.

Andy Velebil wrote:

DRT wrote:The practice seems to have died out since the early 1980s when almost all of the big shippers ceased buying young Port from small farmers and only using grapes from their own properties or buying the grapes rather than the juice.

To be more precise, they started testing all the finished Port they get from small producers and reject any that have a certain chemical analysis that shouldn't show up in pure Port.

Do any of the main producers still buy in finished Port?

E.g., from the Casa do Douro’s ample stocks of 1937 colheita?

Sorry, should have been clearer. I meant in the context of producing VP.

DRT wrote:Sorry, should have been clearer. I meant in the context of producing VP.

Yes

DRT wrote:Do any of the main producers still buy in finished Port?

I believe that most - or at least many - still do. I assume that most of the finished port purchased goes into ruby, ruby reserve and similar lower quality blends. However, at least one of the winemakers we know (but I can't remember which one) was talking recently about having to visit certain suppliers to take a look at their production and to taste some wine samples.