Port at Kiepersol
Kiepersol has truly become a Port House. Every year we are setting aside Black Spanish grapes for legacy plans of Port production. Port is simply a wine that has been fortified with brandy to create a high level of sweetness. We start fermentation like a regular red wine and add the brandy to stop the fermentation before it would naturally end, bringing the level of sweetness up to at least 18% alcohol by volume.
Port is truly where the romance of wine comes to life with time and place captured in a bottle.
We started creating Port in 2003 and today have a program building three different styles. We fortify our Port with our own brandy from the distillery on the property.
The Ruby Port is very approachable and meant to be consumed today. It is barrel-aged from 0-3 years and focuses on the dark jammy fruit flavors while maintaining a fresh and lively palate.
The Tawny Port is a blend of different vintages in order to create a consistent experience between each version of Tawny Port we release. This is the 10-year-aged Port you know and love already that is for sale currently. A 33-year-aged Tawny Port program started in 2016. That means it won’t be available until 2049, but after that, there will be a release each year!
Tawny is for the collectors and the taste profile reflects more of a chocolate, caramel, and praline nuttiness. Tawny literally means ‘brown’ and a brownish tinge to this wine is expected due to its aging.
Our Vintage Port program focuses on one barrel per year (that one vintage listed on the bottle) which is barrel aged 2-3 years, and then designed to bottle age for decades. This is the quintessential wine that gets better with age - the one you picture in cellars with layers of dust. We are currently aging in this vintage program from the harvests of 2011, 2016, 2017, and 2020. After 2022, we will be able to create a limited supply of Vintage Port from each year.
This is truly an investment wine for the patient person who is looking for that vintage, that memory in a bottle, that special gift invoking beautiful memories. The flavor profile is very complex, embracing those barrel-aged flavors over an extended period of time while maintaining the youthful fruit flavors.
Timing is Everything
Kiepersol produced its first Port in 2003. Every label that a winery creates has to be approved by the federal government and then approved individually by any state where it is sold.
And, of course, timing is everything! In 2006, the country of Portugal created a law that no producer outside the Duoro Valley in Portugal could use this protected geographical name on their wines going forward.
This is very similar to the situation where California names their bubbly "sparkling wine" because France has a law that Champagne must be grown and produced in the Champagne region of France.
Since Kiepersol was already approved to use the term on our labels, we are grandfathered in to continue using the term. Other wineries are creating beautiful new fortified wine products, but they cannot call them Port.