Over on Vinous, there are two wines posted weekly. One is dubbed, “Vinous Favorites” and usually an inexpensive bottle. The other is, “Cellar Favorite” and is frequently an older, perhaps rare bottle and the author is often Neal Martin. This week, he posted a bit on a 1961 Taylor’s Very Old Single Harvest Port. In the description, Neal writes, “Taylor’s did release a 1961 Quinta de Vargellas. The rest of the reserves matured in pipes at their lodge in Vila Nova de Gaia, a majority used for Tawny Port with a few choice pipes left alone to mature. It is from here that this limited release of just 2,900 bottles originates.” What are these pipes he’s referring to?
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it’s a traditional port aging cask that is around 550L
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It’s a measurement unit for volume of Port. In the old days, Port used to be shipped to merchants in barrels and the merchants bottled them. The barrels they were transported in were called pipas, or pipes.
It used to be quite common amongst the well off to purchase a pipe of port either for their own consumption or to put away for their child or young relative. Volumes used to vary depending on cask size, but nowadays it’s refers to 550L of Port.
Thanks, Keith and Rodrigo. Now I know!
Ruby styled Ports, including Vintage Port, are aged in large casks of thousands of liters. In the case of Vintage Port, they are then bottled after approximately 2 years. Wood aged Ports are aged in pipes, elongated shaped barrels of between 500 and 600 liters. The smaller vessels allow for more oxygen contact and more rapid wood aging. These are all decades, if not centuries, old so their effect is more oxygenation rather than wood flavoring.
Port Pipes, as mentioned, are wine barrels somewhere between low 550 liters to just above 600 liters. Typically, around 550 liters. Exact content size varies a lot as they are handmade and quite old, typically 80-100+ years old. The larger companies still employ in-house Coopers to take care of all the wood barrels. It’s quite the sight to watch Coopers take apart, clean, repair and put a barrel back together. A true skill.
Here’s a really good video about Graham’s Port. It shows a lot of pics of Port Pipes being pulled by an Ox, in the Lodges and loaded on the old boats to be brought down river to the Port Lodges. It also shows the Coopers at work.
