Port questions

[AlexR]

Hi,

I have noticed that some of the most famous Port houses bottle a flagship vintage Port as well as a single vineyard vintage Port.

Examples of the latter:

Dow’s Quinta do Bomfin
Graham’s Quinta dos Malvedos
Taylor’s Quinta de Vargellas

The price differential is quite significant between the “straight” vintage and the single Quinta vintage, with the former being much more expensive.
Why is this?
In most other vineyard regions, it would be the reverse, i.e. the more precise the geogrpahical location, the more expensive…

Also, I recently bought several bottles of Graham’s crusted Port. This says “bottled in 2015”. Should one assume that this means the wine therein is a blend of several vintages of unfiltered ruby port?

Best regards,
Alex R.

[AKR]

My understanding is that typically in a declared vintage a shipper might make 3000-4000 cases of their flagship VP, at hypothetically $100 or so. And in the vintages where either quality, or market conditions, preclude declaring a VP, they will release some smaller amount of port, that is supposedly near in quality to the flagship, and typically sold under the brand/name of a prominent vineyard which normally supplies the parts of the blend. So there might only be a couple thousand cases of a 'Quinta' offering, perhaps intended for the loyalists determined to buy/consume a VP every year.

I have had relatively few over the decades and don't see them much at normal retailers. I was at a Total Wine over the weekend, which has a pretty huge port section by anyone's standards, and I'm trying to recall if I saw any. [I just checked their app, and my location apparently has the 2015 Sandeman 'Quinta do Seixo' VP for $92, which seems plump, as my perception was that these were in the $50ish price points? It's a strange niche, and they are supposedly good deals, but generally one would have to prowl around the WineBids, K&Ls of the world I think to find them, at least in my region.

I'm not sure why they have structured their nomenclature and price hierarchy they way they have, but whatever the big shippers are doing, I don't think its working. I feel like less Porto is consumed among family/friends today, than a generation ago. I did learn a bit from reading a book on this, whose review is below.
https://www.wineberserkers.com/t/book-r ... 997/176277

[Musigny 151]

In addition to the single Quinta Ports are special bottlings of single Quinta (vinhas Velas)

Brilliant stuff and very expensive. Taylor sometimes released this the same year as normal vintage.