Port

Though it accounts for around one percent of production, vintage port is the flagship wine of all Portugal. It is made entirely from grapes of a declared vintage year. Not every year is declared a vintage in the Douro, only those when conditions are favourable to particularly flavourful crops of grapes. The decision to declare a vintage is made by each individual port house, and is based on several factors, most notably the weather and the ability of the marketplace to absorb a new vintage. While it is by far the most renowned type of port, from a volume and revenue standpoint vintage port actually makes up a small percentage of the production of a typical port house. Vintage ports are aged in barrels for a maximum of 2 years before bottling, and often require another 5 to 15 years of aging in the bottle before reaching what is considered proper drinking age. Since they are aged in barrels for only a short time, they retain their dark ruby colour and fresh fruit flavours. Particularly fine vintage ports can continue to gain complexity and drink wonderfully for decades after they were bottled, and therefore can be particularly sought after and expensive wines.

Although it bears the word ""vintage"" in its name, single-Quinta Vintage Port is produced from a particular vineyard and usually from a lesser ""undeclared"" year. Neither it nor the so-called ""late bottled vintage"" wines are true vintage port.

""Port"" wines produced outside of Portugal may be labelled with a vintage date, but rarely possess the quality and proven age-ability of true vintage port. They are vintage in the sense that they come from the produce of a specific year, but in most other respects are the opposite. They typically are meant for immediate consumption, produced nearly every year regardless of vintage conditions and are made from grapes of no particular distinction. Prices for ""port"" are similarly lower compared with genuine port. Nonetheless, some such ""ports"" or port-style wines improve with age. There is rarely universal agreement on the quality of the wine produced from a given year, and in some years a single producer may be alone in declaring a vintage. However, occasionally the harvest of a year is so good that all the major producers declare a vintage, and it is in these years that the port that is produced can last for over forty years, commanding high prices at auction.

Red port can be made from many types of grapes (castas), but the main ones are Tinta Barroca, Tinta Cão, Tinta Roriz (Tempranillo), Touriga Francesa, and Touriga Nacional. White ports are produced the same way as red ports, except that they use white grapes-Esgana-Cão, Folgasão, Malvasia, Rabigato, Verdelho, and Viosinho. While Porto produced in Portugal is strictly regulated by the Instituto do Vinho do Porto, many wines in the U.S. use the above names but do not conform to the same standards. Thus each genuine port style has a corresponding, often very different, style that can be found in wines made outside Portugal.