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Please The Palate Pick of the Week: Colheita Port

I spent the past week eating and drinking my way through Porto and the Douro in northern Portugal. There were so many wonderful wines, from still white and red Douro wines to the famous and historical Ports, both ruby and tawny. But at each and every tasting, the one wine that stole my heart was the Colheita and that is why it is the Please the Palate Pick of the week. Port can be ruby or tawny. Ruby Ports, whether young, reserve, LBV or vintage, tend to be more fruit driven as they do not age in oak. A tawny port is a port that is aged in wood so that oxygen flows through resulting in the loss of color and the development of different flavors. Tawny Port is available in 10 Year, 20 Year, 30 Year, 40 Year and Colheita, an aged Tawny Port made with grapes from a single vintage.

"Colheita" means "harvest" in Portuguese. Colheitas are required by law to mature in wooden casks for at least seven years, although it can be much longer. The wine is bottled when the producer feels it is ready to drink.

16 December, 2017

Quinta do Mourão: A Young Tradition

This story originally appeared in the Napa Valley Register. Miguel Braga was 10 years old when his father, Mario Braga, purchased Quinta do Mourão, as well as four other properties, in the Douro in Portugal.

It was 1972 and Miguel spent every summer working on the farm. As much as he loved being out on the farm, he went to study economics and, as guided by his father, went to work in economics. Miguel worked as a financial holder but every September he would return to the Douro on vacation to work harvest.

In 1999, Mario Braga passed away, and Miguel worked his first harvest without his father. Until then, they had been making what Miguel called “generalist” wine. They owned their own vineyards and made Port that they would then sell to one of the larger producers to blend into a final product.

But Miguel realized that they would be able to get a better price on selling bottles instead of selling the juice. In 2000, he decided to produce and bottle wine, and to honor his father and he named it Mário Braga Herdeiros, translated to “the Heirs of Mário Braga.” Miguel made his first dry wine in 2001 and came to market in 2003. By 2004, Miguel left his job as an economist and devoted himself full-time to the winery.

20 September, 2017