Four leading Port houses - Graham's, Dow's, Warre's and Quinta do Vesuvio - have declared the 2000 vintage.
The early signs indicate a selection of robust wines with excellent concentration and power, leading to expectations of a vintage suited to long ageing. A Graham’s press release says, ‘A very low-yielding harvest has produced one of the best Graham’s Vintage Ports for many years.’
Dow’s has only declared 25 vintages in the last 100 years. ‘Production was very low,’ the company says.
For the first time, Graham’s vintage includes wines made using unique automatic ‘lagares’ (treading troughs), in which robotic ‘feet’ mimic the action of human treaders.
All the wines used in the Quinta do Vesuvio vintage were produced using the traditional system, with each lagar worked by teams of 50 grape treaders. This is the only quinta that still uses traditional methods on such a scale.
Written by Josie McLaughlin17 April 2002
