NEWS

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D irk N iepoort

Niepoort’s Garrafeira Cellar lies behind a rustic wooden door on a quiet side street of Vila Nova de Gaia. The shelves are �illed with squat demijohns, nine- to thirteen-liter glass bottles Dirk Niepoort’s great-grandfather brought from Germany, each marked with a handwritten record of the Tawny Port within. For those who know them, these are some of the greatest wines in the world. They offer a decadent pleasure Dirk Niepoort describes as bottle sickness. It’s there in his VV as well, a Tawny Port based on wine from 1863, the youngest component in the blend from 1940. “My grandfather wanted to make the best Tawny, period,” he says. “With thirty years in bottle, it smells fresher than when it was bottled. Bottle sickness is what makes the difference. As Tawny ages in barrel, it gets more and more concentrated. Then in bottle, it gets more and more focused.” Niepoort is the only Port wine maker who has talked up bottle sickness to me – �irst when he poured a 20-Year-Old Tawny that he had aged an additional 20 years in bottle (it was one of the most delicious and memorable Ports I’ve tasted), and again when he poured the VV. It’s the sort of esoteric knowledge that doesn’t come from enology books or classes, but from experience, observation, listening and tasting with José Nogueira, who has blended the Port wines at Niepoort for more than 50 years.

Joshua Green · October 2013

Niepoort @ Wine & Spirits

For most anyone born into an élite business such as Niepoort, sustaining the family’s position in the Port wine trade would be an ambitious career in and of itself. While Dirk Niepoort continues to �ight that battle, he has earned his place in the history of the Douro on a different front. Niepoort is the unof�icial leader of a movement that has recast the region: Identi-fying great sites for table wine and farming them as table wine vineyards. For more than a century, table wine has been an afterthought for the Douro wine community, its economy and its challenging viticulture sustained by the Port trade.Niepoort began seriously experimenting with table wines in the late 1980s, after convincing his father, Rolf, that the company should buy vineyard land. They purchased two quintas, Carril and Nápoles, above the Tedo River, which feeds into the Douro several kilometers north. From a few barrels tucked into an old stone hut on Nápoles, Niepoort’s table wine business has grown to �ill what is now a vast, underground cellar on the property, a second winery in Vale de Mendiz, and spread to four other vini�ication centers around the Douro, where his team makes Twisted. Originally a project for the German market, under the comic-strip label Fabelhaft, its success led Niepoort to release the same blend in other markets, each with its own name and strip, now accounting for 67,000 cases worldwide. The 2010 Twisted is, by far, the best vintage yet, a tight, �loral red saturated with cool berry fruit.At the top end of Niepoort’s table wine production, you’ll �ind Robustus and Charme, two completely different takes on Douro terroir. Robustus, as its name suggests, focuses on the region’s powerful fruit and schist-driven earthiness. It’s aged for four years in large, old wooden vats, needing hours in a decanter for the wood in�luence to transform into beautiful Douro richness, red fruit and tannins with schist precision. Charme is selected from the fruit of old vines in Vale de Mendiz, one of the most coveted neighborhoods for Port grapes. And yet it has the most delicate texture of any great Douro wine, a silkiness that references Burgundy without abandoning its home base. Niepoort achieves that �inesse by fermenting the wine with its stems in lagars, then aging it in barrique. Nick Delaforce, who runs Niepoort’s winery in Vale de Mendiz, is in charge of Charme, and oversees the aging of the Twisted blend in Vila Nova de Gaia. Luis Seabra made the 2008 Robustus, and had been Dirk Niepoort’s point man at Nápoles from 2004 through ’12, when he left to start his own project. Since then, Niepoort has been traveling less and spending more time focused on production in the Douro – except for the time he’s devoting on his latest purchase, the Quinta do Baixo in Bairrada. Having been one of the most vocal advocates of baga grown in the region’s limestone soils, Niepoort is now taking a hands-on approach with 42 acres of biodynamically farmed vines. Watch for his �irst release (under the Niepoort Projecto label) later this year.

Top Scoring Wines

94 Points | 2008 RobustusAged for four years in large, old wooden vats, this wine struck several sommeliers on the panel for its “high drinkability factor.” I was less sold at �irst, assuming the old wood was drying it out, concerned about what appeared to be Brett. Several hours later, the wine’s red fruit began to take over, the initial earthiness of the wood transforming to a schist soil character. Air brings out a beautiful Douro richness in the �lavor of this wine, along with the schist precision of the tannins. Gripping.

94 Points | 2010 Charme TintoDelicate scents of schist soil and black raspberries rise out of this sunny vintage of Charme. The texture of this wine is unlike any other from the Douro, its �ineness and persistent delivery of �lavor more parallel to Burgundy than Port. Made from old-vine fruit selected from Vale Mendiz, fermented with the stems in lagars and aged in French barriques, this wine shows more of its oak on release than prior vintages. There’s tensile strength to the underlying structure, the precision of fruit-skin tannins and the earthy elevation of stem tannins, all of which suggest a long and glorious life ahead.

92 Points | 2010 Twisted TintoThe best vintage yet of Niepoort’s most accessible Douro blend, the 2010 Twisted is supple and elegant, a tight, �loral red driven by spice and saturated with cool berry fruit. The interplay of red currant, blueberry and black plum �lavors weaves into a satin-textured beauty, a wine that performs far beyond its price.

Other reviews:

92 Points | 2010 Vertente TintoA blend of fruit from Niepoort’s Quinta de Nápoles, a north-facing vineyard, with old- vine selections from the Pinhão Valley, Vertente is aged in French oak, building chocolate richness into the powerful schist tannins. It’s savory, with generous red fruit pressing through the darker notes. Satin-textured deliciousness from the Douro.

88 Points | 2010 Batuta TintoRed currant juiciness marks this vintage of Batuta, the warm fruit surrounded by meaty scents and mulling spice. Young and unresolved, this needs a few years of bottle age to come together.

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02Wine & Spirits · October 2013