Ruby port

Ruby port is port in the so-called ruby style: wines where the maker wants to slow the development of the deep red colour, as the Instituto dos Vinhos do Douro e do Porto (IVDP) describes it. Port is made in the demarcated Douro region in Portugal and, according to the IVDP, usually has an alcohol content between 19 and 22 percent.

According to trade magazine Decanter, the simplest ruby is a blend of wines from more than one year. It is aged in large lots for up to three years and then bottled young, so that the red colour is retained. The label then usually says Ruby or Fine Ruby.

The IVDP ranks the ruby style in ascending order in four categories: ruby, reserve, Late Bottled Vintage (LBV) and vintage.

According to the IVDP, a reserve ruby is often a selection of the best port of the year, blended into a single blend. An LBV is a ruby from a single harvest year, bottled after four to six years of ageing in wood. Vintage port also comes from a single harvest year, but goes into the bottle two to three years after the harvest and then develops for another ten to fifty years. According to the IVDP, vintage and LBV in particular lend themselves to keeping, because they mature well in the bottle.

Rosé port falls outside this list. The IVDP describes rosé as pink wine from red grapes that are macerated only briefly, without oxidation during storage.

The difference is in the ageing: ruby ages briefly and largely in bottle, tawny ages long in wood. A ruby is bottled young so that the red colour is kept. According to the IVDP, tawny is a blend of lots that have lain in casks for different lengths of time, and is ready to drink as soon as it is bottled.

Decanter describes how tawny matures in smaller casks of 600 to 640 litres, the lodge pipes. Through controlled oxidation, the colour shifts there from deep ruby red to orange and amber. The tawny family has its own categories: tawny, tawny reserve, tawny with an age statement (10, 20, 30 and 40 years) and colheita. Anyone torn between ruby and tawny is therefore really choosing between bottled young and aged long on wood.

By the harvest year: both LBV and vintage state a single year, a regular ruby or reserve does not. An LBV carries Late Bottled Vintage or LBV on the label, a vintage only Vintage with the year.

A vintage is not made every year. According to Decanter, each port house decides for itself whether to declare a year, and the wine must be submitted for approval between 1 January and 30 September of the second year after the harvest. LBV comes in two variants: filtered, which are fined and filtered before bottling, and unfiltered, which are bottled without filtration and can then continue to mature in the bottle.

In the shop there are 16 bottles of ruby port, all from Portugal. The brands are Kopke, Delaforce, Niepoort, Ramos Pinto, Cálem, F. Martins, Graham's, Offley and Sandeman.

Examples are the Fine Ruby from Cálem, Delaforce and Graham's, the Offley Ruby, the Ramos Pinto Ruby and from Niepoort both the Ruby and The Junior Ruby. From Kopke we have the Reserve Ruby, the Quinta Lobata Ruby and the Christmas Port Ruby, the latter also as a half bottle of 37.5 cl. The Kopke Fine Ruby is also available as a half bottle. Would you like to know which bottle suits your occasion? Feel free to call or drop by at Brink 2 in Bathmen.

The shop is at Brink 2 in Bathmen. Open Tuesday to Friday from 09.00 to 18.00 and Saturday from 09.00 to 17.00. For advice, call 0570 541 278 or email info@bockje.nl.