Types of Port: Ruby, Tawny, LBV, Vintage and Colheita

Most types of Port are finished the day you buy them. Four are not, and that difference is the whole of Port collecting.

The Instituto dos Vinhos do Douro e do Porto, which certifies every bottle, divides Port into two ageing styles. Ruby style holds the fruit and the deep colour, and covers Ruby, Reserve, Late Bottled Vintage and Vintage. Tawny style is blended from wines aged in cask until the colour fades, and covers Tawny, Tawny Reserve, Tawny with an Indication of Age and Colheita. Of those the IVDP says "these wines are ready to drink when they are bottled". So are the standard whites, the rosés and filtered LBV. Only four categories are built to keep changing in glass, and the rulebook says so: Vintage, unfiltered LBV, Crusted, which must stay in bottle at least three years, and Garrafeira, which must stay there fifteen. Vintage has the earliest bottling deadline of any category, 30 July of the third year after the harvest.

What makes a wine Port in the first place?

Fortification, and a place. The IVDP defines Port as "a fortified wine, as defined in EU legislation", produced in the Demarcated Region of the Douro. There, adding grape brandy stops the fermentation of the must. The Portuguese name for that addition is benefício, which the IVDP glossary defines as "the adding of grape brandy to fermenting wine".

Stopping the fermentation early is what leaves the sugar in. The IVDP says the most frequently used proportion is "one part grape spirit to four parts of must-wine", which lands the finished wine at "between 19% and 22% v/v". How much sugar survives is the winemaker's call: "It is the winemaker who determines just how sweet a Port Wine will be according to when he interrupts the fermentation."

That decision is scaled and published. The IVDP sweetness bands run:

Band	Residual sugar
Extra dry	under 40 g/l
Dry	40 to 65 g/l
Semi dry	65 to 90 g/l
Sweet	90 to 130 g/l
Very sweet	over 130 g/l

The region behind it covers "approximately 250 000 hectares" across three sub-regions, which the IVDP names Lower Corgo, Upper Corgo and Upper Douro. Where a shipper's fruit sits inside that spread matters more in Port than in most regions, because the best Vintage lots come from a small number of named quintas. The Douro producer atlas maps them. If you want the wider category first, start with the fortified wine guide.

What are the special categories of Port?

These are the categories the IVDP certifies individually, each with its own ageing rule and its own minimum score from the tasting chamber, the Câmara de Provadores. Everything that is not one of these is standard Ruby, Tawny, white or rosé.

Category	Harvest	Ageing rule	Minimum panel grade
Ruby Reserve	Blend	No minimum wood time, quality approval only	Muito Boa, 7 of 10
Tawny Reserve, White Reserve	Blend	Minimum 6 years in wood	Muito Boa, 7 of 10
Tawny with Indication of Age, 10 to 50 years	Blend	Extended ageing in pipes under close control	Elevada, 8 of 10
Tawny 80 years, Very Very Old	Blend	Extended ageing in pipes	Excecional, 9 of 10
Colheita	Single	Minimum 7 years in wood, counted from 1 September of the second year after the harvest	Elevada, 8 of 10
Late Bottled Vintage	Single	Wood or inert vessel. Certified 1 March to 31 December of the fourth year, bottled by 31 December of the sixth	Elevada, 8 of 10
Crusted	Blend	Minimum 3 years in bottle	Elevada, 8 of 10
Vintage	Single	Wood or inert vessel. Certified January to June of the second year, bottled by 30 July of the third	Excecional, 9 of 10
Garrafeira	Single	4 to 8 years in wood, then a minimum of 15 years in glass	Elevada, 8 of 10

Read the grade column, not the romance. Vintage and the oldest tawnies are the only categories the IVDP holds to Excecional, 9 out of 10. Everything from Colheita to Crusted sits a rung below at Elevada, and the Reserve tier a rung below that. A Ruby Reserve is a wine that passed a quality panel with no minimum time in cask at all.

One category sits inside another. The IVDP describes Single Quinta Vintage as a wine that is "not only the product of a single harvest but also of a single quinta, or wine estate". Same certification, same 9 of 10, narrower source.

What is the difference between Vintage and LBV Port?

About four years in cask, and everything that follows from it. Taylor's puts the contrast in one line: Vintage is kept in wood "for only twenty months or so", while its LBV stays there "between four and six years".

Those extra years do the settling and softening that a Vintage leaves to your cellar. Taylor's says its LBV "is ready to drink when bottled, does not need to be decanted and can be served by the glass". A Vintage is the opposite proposition. It goes into glass while still tannic and closed, and the development happens after you own it.

There is a trap in the LBV category, and it is not marked on the front label. The IVDP recognises two LBV styles: filtered, which is ready to drink, and unfiltered, which throws a sediment. As the IVDP puts it, most LBVs are ready when purchased, "but some will continue to age in bottle (check the label)". Same category name, same certification window, two different wines. The unfiltered ones need decanting and reward keeping. The filtered ones do not, and buying a case of them to lay down is money spent on a wine that has already done its ageing.

Vintage declaration is rarer than the category implies. Taylor's states that "historically Taylor's has only declared about three Vintage years per decade", with the blend having to be "austere in its youth, with tremendous depth of flavour and massive structure". In the other seven years the house may bottle a Single Quinta instead: Taylor's says that "in years when a Taylor's Vintage is not declared, the decision may be taken to bottle a Single Quinta Vintage Port". Those wines are, in Taylor's words, "generally more early maturing than the declared Taylor's Vintages".

What does a 10, 20 or 40 year old tawny actually mean?

It describes a taste, not an arithmetic average. The IVDP defines the age-indicated tawnies as a blend of wines aged in wood whose organoleptic character matches the age stated on the label, matured in pipes under close control. The number is what the tasting panel signs off on, not a measured mean of the components.

Which is why cask size and stock depth are the real variables. Taylor's ages its 10 year old in "seasoned oak casks each holding about 630 litres of wine" and blends it "from its extensive reserves of old cask aged Ports". A house sitting on deep reserves of genuinely old cask wine has a different palette to work from than a house that does not, and the label number will not tell you which you are buying.

The quality bar steps up at the top. The IVDP requires Elevada, 8 of 10, for everything from 10 to 50 years, and Excecional, 9 of 10, for the 80 year and Very Very Old designations. Those are the only tawny tiers held to the same standard as Vintage.

None of them improve after bottling. An age-indicated tawny is finished when it leaves the pipe. What matters for freshness is how long the bottle has sat in glass since, not the number on the front.

What is Colheita Port, and why is it not a Vintage?

Because the harvest is single but the ageing is oxidative. The IVDP requires a Colheita to spend a minimum of seven years in wood, counted from 1 September of the second year after the vintage. The label must carry both the harvest year and the bottling year.

That second date is the one buyers skip. A Colheita stops developing when it goes into glass, so one harvest bottled after fifteen years in cask and the same harvest bottled after fifty are not the same wine and should not carry the same price. The IVDP notes that long exposure to air concentrates and intensifies the fruit in these wines, and it recommends drinking younger Colheitas sooner once opened. The harvest year sells the bottle. The bottling year explains it.

Crusted and Garrafeira, the two categories nobody explains

Crusted is a Vintage's structure without a Vintage's year. The IVDP defines it as a blend of high-quality wines from different harvests that "must be kept in bottle for at least three years before being sold", during which time "Crusted Ports throw a deposit in the bottle (the crust), hence its name". It needs decanting, and it is graded 8 of 10.

Garrafeira is the strangest thing the IVDP certifies. A single harvest, then 4 to 8 years in wood, then a minimum of 15 years in glass, with the label required to show the harvest year and the final bottling year. The IVDP calls it one of the rarest and most singular categories in Port. Treat any Garrafeira at auction as a provenance question first and a wine second, and read the condition and fill guide before you bid on one.

Where do white and rosé Port fit?

White Port runs the whole sweetness scale, from extra dry to very sweet. The IVDP recognises the same tiering as red: White Reserve at a minimum of 6 years in wood, plus White with an Indication of Age at 10, 20, 30 and 40 years, and White Colheita.

The dry end is a modern invention with a datable start. Taylor's says its Chip Dry "was first blended in 1934" and that "Taylor's was the first to pioneer dry white aperitif Port". The technique is a late fortification: "the brandy is added later, when much of the sugar has been converted into alcohol, producing a port of unusual dryness." The wines are "matured separately in oak vats for between four and five years", with the Malvasia Fina grape predominating.

Rosé is the youngest style in the book. Croft describes Croft Pink as the first rosé Port. The IVDP gives the style the coldest serving temperature of any Port at 4°C. That compares with 6 to 10°C for white, 10 to 14°C for tawny styles and 12 to 16°C for ruby styles.

Both are drinking categories rather than cellar ones. Aged white Port is the part of the range that gets overlooked, and it is worth tasting an old White Colheita against a tawny of the same age before you decide what you think.

How long does an open bottle last, by type?

Longer than almost anyone assumes, except for the one category people save for a special occasion. The IVDP publishes conservation times after opening for every style, as guidance rather than law:

Type	Days after opening
Vintage	1 to 2 days
LBV	4 to 5 days
Crusted	4 to 5 days
Ruby and Ruby Reserve	8 to 10 days
Standard white, modern style	8 to 10 days
Standard white, traditional style	15 to 20 days
Tawny and Tawny Reserve	3 to 4 weeks
Tawny with Indication of Age	1 to 4 months
White with Indication of Age	1 to 4 months
Colheita	1 to 4 months

The pattern is the same one that governs the whole classification. Wines that finished their ageing in wood have already met all the oxygen they are going to meet, so a few more days of air changes little. A Vintage has been sealed away from oxygen since it was young, and gets two days. Open one on the strength of "it's Port, it keeps" and you will waste most of the bottle.

Which types of Port hold their value?

Declared Vintage first, then Single Quinta from the same houses in undeclared years. The rest of the classification is built for drinking, and the categories themselves tell you why.

The reason is structural rather than fashionable. A declared Vintage is a single harvest, made in about three years a decade at a house like Taylor's, bottled by 30 July of the third year, and capable of decades of development in glass. That combination produces the two things a secondary market needs: scarcity fixed at bottling, and a maturity curve long enough that supply and drinking demand separate for thirty years. Taylor's calls Vintage "the ultimate collector's Port wines". It says of its Quinta de Vargellas Single Quinta that it is "regarded as more prestigious and collectable than many shippers' declared Vintages" and that the wines "often appear for sale at auction". A tawny has none of that. The blend is continuous, the house can make more, and the wine does not change after bottling.

The question worth answering is whether the Single Quinta discount is a quality judgement or a liquidity one. If it narrows as the wines mature, the market is paying for the label at release and for the wine later, which is a straightforward opportunity. Start with Taylor's Vintage Port and Graham's Vintage Port, compare Douro 2017 against Douro 2016, and check the market index for how the category has tracked against Bordeaux and Burgundy. Before you bid on anything, run the number through the landed-cost calculator. Port's buyer's premium and fee stack is the same as everything else's, and the lots are usually smaller, which makes fixed costs bite harder.

Watch the Ports you want, not the ones that happen to be listed

A declared Vintage does not appear when you are looking for it. It appears when someone else decides to sell, and the well-provenanced cases are gone by lunchtime.

Put the shippers, harvests and formats you actually want on a watchlist and we will tell you the moment one is catalogued or repriced, with the all-in landed cost already worked out. You bid on the bottle you chose months ago at a number you set when you were calm, instead of on whatever came up this week.

Sometimes the case is already in your cellar, and the question is when to open it rather than what to pay. The drink-now maturity tracker has the per-vintage windows. The two-day rule above is the part most people get wrong.