Niepoort 2008 Bioma Vinha Velha Vintage Port

Description

Niepoort Bioma Vinha Velha Vintage Port 2008 is the inaugural vintage of this wine which is from Niepoort’s Pisca Vineyard.

Niepoort is a family company now in its fifth generation and presently managed by Dirk Niepoort. Despite being the second smallest shippers in the trade they are second to none in quality. Already famous for their classic tawny ports, they have now joined the ranks of the great producers of Vintage Port.

Niepoort’s concept for Bioma is to create, or re-create, a style of Vintage Port which not only respects the terroir, but also harks back to a golden age of Port. At the heart of the concept of “Bioma Vinha Velha”, is a very special vineyard (Vinha da Pisca) in a very special part of the Douro. For many years, this vineyard has provided the backbone of Niepoort Vintage Ports but, since 2005, Niepoort has been able to study the qualities of this vineyard in greater detail, managing it in a organic way, and furthermore, identifying better, part of the remarkable wines made here for setting aside, as Bioma in 2008 (and previously as Pisca in 2007).

The “Vinha Velha” refers to the extraordinary age of the vines at Vinha da Pisca, mostly exceeding 80 years old. Niepoort intends to offer, in very small quantities, a style of Vintage Port which is more akin to the very best English-bottled Vintage Ports of 1970 and before. The exceptional fruit quality from the ancient vines of the Pisca Vineyard appears to express its sense of place quite wonderfully when the “logic” of older times is applied – the grapes for Bioma are foot trodden at the Niepoort Port winemaking facility in Vale de Mendiz and vinified with the stems. After fortification, the port is left to settle over the winter and following spring the port is transferred to Niepoort’s Quinta de Napoles winery where it it racked into pipas (the classic 550L lodge Port pipe or barrel). The wine is a blend of Touriga Franca, Tinta Roriz, Tinto Cão, Tinta Francisca, Tinta Amarela, Sousão, Touriga Nacional and others

This is a classic old “English” Port-making practice harking back to the days when Port was shipped to the UK in pipes and bottled there. Bioma also differs from “normal” vintage Port in that it is bottled in its third year, one year later than classic Vintage Port.