A climatology of Vintage Port quality

Abstract

The Douro Valley of Portugal is a well-known wine region producing Port wine since the end of the 18th century, with quality table wines becoming increasingly important over the last 20 years. Port wine production is the most important economic sector of the region and Vintage Port is the top quality Port wine type, produced only from the best vintages. The purpose of this research was to examine how the variability of annual weather influences the quality of Vintage Port. A weather and climate data set for the period 1980-2009 and a consensus ranking that combined a collection of vintage chart scores into a ranking were used to characterize both the weather and the vintage quality. In order to more precisely model the weather influences on the quality of the vintages it was necessary to partition the growing season into smaller growth intervals in which several heat and precipitation variables were evaluated. The heat-related variables were defined according to the phenology of grapevines, using a partition of the growing season based on accumulated temperature, rather than on calendar dates. Precipitation variables were calculated using broad periods corresponding to the dormant, vegetative and maturation stages of the grapevines. A logistic regression model was used as a tool to identify the weather variables that help to explain the relationships between yearly weather characteristics and vintage quality. The results show that several weather characteristics are strongly associated with better quality vintages: growing season mean temperatures above the region's average, warm winters, cool July through veraison and cool temperatures during ripening. In summary, although the weather is not solely responsible for determining a vintage quality, it plays an important role on it; therefore, its understanding can provide invaluable management insights to growers and producers.