Niepoort (Vinhos) S.A.

HARVEST 2007 is an exciting year for Niepoort: We celebrate 20 years of Dirk at Niepoort and hope Harvest 2007 will do justice do the celebration! In the following notes and photos from the team in DOURO in Vale Mendiz and in the new winery in Quinta de Napolés

HARVEST REPORT 2007-NIEPOORT VALE DE MENDIZ by Nick Delaforce

After several years of very dry winters, the 2006/2007 agricultural year was different. Relatively high winter rainfall was most useful in replacing dwindling water reserves. Further rain in May led to poor fruit set and the unseasonably humid months of June and July gave rise to outbreaks of downy mildew in untreated vineyards. Due to cool weather during the month of August, early September saw maturity slightly delayed. However, warm days and the onset of cooler nights allowed maturity to reach completion by the middle of the month. At Niepoort`s historic winery in Vale de Mendiz, in the heart of the Douro, harvest started on Friday 14th of September. Apart from a brief thunderstorm on 16th of September and light showers at the end the month, the harvest was carried out under excellent conditions. The last grapes arrived on 15th of October. Fermenting musts exhibited dark colours with spectacular purple hues and very good acid balance, thus requiring few acid additions. Stories of potentially high crop losses in untreated vineyards proved to be false, as the majority of vineyards had healthy crops. In addition, the problems with fruit set earlier in the season acted as a substitute for bunch thinning! Overall quality of all the ports is high. The ports demonstrate some wonderfully unique and dark characteristics, especially from old vineyards in the Vale de Mendiz area. These promise to close up well over the coming winter months. Charme, a wine whose elegant style is often a challenge to make in a hot year, benefited from the cooler ripening conditions, providing freshness, acid balance and avoiding overripeness.

HARVEST REPORT 2007-NIEPOORT QUINTA DE NÁPOLES by Luis Seabra

Special year this 2007 harvest, after rainy October and November 2006 with almost 400 mm of total rain, water reserves of the Douro soils were replenished. First months of the year 2007 were quite dry, although February brought good amount of rain. Although March and April add come with average quite spread along the months it was May and especially June that brought heavy rain concentrated in 2 days (14 and 16 June).

All this conditions promoted very good conditions to cryptogrammic diseases pressure all over Douro. And only with careful work in the vineyards growers could keep their vineyards protect specially against downy mildew.

Cool weather of August and good weather of September with fantastic cool nights were perfect to have a balanced maturation in all Douro vineyards, with a slightly delayed harvest started at the brand new winery of Quinta de Nápoles, on 7 September both with red and white grapes, and went until 12^th October.

Although we had some initial doubts about the year, everything went smoothly easy, and only a thunderstorm on 16^th September gave us reasons to worry with harvest conditions. All fermenting red must exhibits amazing dark purple colours with incredible acidity’s not needing any acid addiction. Like in other years some of the problems with downy mildew help in a few vineyards to reach balanced yields of perfect grapes that certainly one of the causes for such perfect musts.

Maturation of higher white grapes vineyards, were delayed in one or to weeks and it was possible to harvest almost all the vines with less than 13 º potential alcohol and fairly good acidities, given very elegant and complex white wines, full of mineral character.

Overall it was one historical harvest for Niepoort not only because it was the first year of the new winery, but also because 2007 is going to be remembered by is great quality only possible once or twice per decade.