NIEPOORT Vintage Port 2022 Bottle

Description

Niepoort’s 2022 Vintage Port exemplifies the winery’s tradition of producing balanced and concentrated wines while maintaining elegance. This vintage has received exceptional acclaim, with James Suckling awarding it 99 points. He notes its intense nose of bramble fruit, floral violets, and hints of graphite, underscoring a full-bodied, harmoniously concentrated profile with brilliant acidity. The Wine Advocate rates it 97 points, highlighting its finesse and power, with refined tannins and an ethereal quality, describing it as dancing with energy and a dry finish. Jancis Robinson scores it 18 points, praising its intense black and blue fruit character, charming grainy tannins, and deep sweetness contrasted by a surprisingly dry finish. This vintage Port promises immense aging potential and is perfect for enjoying in the years to come.

*****

The 2022 Vintage Port keeps with Niepoort’s tradition of producing balanced and concentrated Ports, whilst staying delicate and elegant. At Niepoort, we believe in our ability to produce Vintage Ports that can age for many decades. Vintage Port spends 2 years in large oak vats before being bottled. The magic of Vintage Port is different at every stage: fresh ripe fruity character when young, revealing its complexity and depth after 20 or more years in the bottle. Every individual component of Vintage 2022 Vintage Port was foot trodden in granite lagares, fully stemmed. Soon after the harvest they were put in large oak vats for the duration of winter, after which they were brought to Vila Nova de Gaia in March 2023. Wonderful dark purple rim, violet hues, and a beautifully intense colour. Delicate in the nose and extremely sophisticated, floral hints of violets, graphite, liquorice and blackberries. The true style and potential of this wine show through its aromas and structure, as well as in the balance between volume and elegance, with a spicy and drier-than-expected finish. This is quite probably one of the finest Vintage Ports of the decade, with wonderful acidity, structure, sweetness and tannins so balanced as to allow us to dream of a great ageing potential.

JAMES SUCKLING 99 points
This has an intense nose of bramble fruit, together with dried fruit, very floral notes of violets, earth, peppercorn and a touch of graphite. It’s full-bodied with remarkable concentration that is counterbalanced by brilliant acidity and sophisticated tannins. It has an orderly and harmonious sense that will result in an exceptional wine. It's all about balance here — thought-provoking even in such a premature state. A mighty vintage from Niepoort. Better from 2030. - Jacobo García Andrade

THE WNE ADVOCATE 97 points
Drink Date: 2030 - 2070 - Niepoort's 2022 Vintage Port comes from very old vines in the Cima Corgo zone (mostly around Pinhão), all made in lagar with 100% full clusters and matured in large (5,000- to 10,000-liter) oak vats. Dirk Niepoort wants a combination of powerful, classical vineyards with others he likes because of their elegance. The wine has a lot more finesse, but it's a little backwards and closed and took a good couple of hours to take off. It's chewy and long, with a lot of tannin, but the tannins are very refined. It has power and concentration; Niepoort wants a lot of concentration, unlike in the table wines, but the wine has an ethereal quality to it. Power and lightness—it's a wine that dances and has the energy of a ballet dancer, very long and with a dry finish. It has some 95 grams of sugar, less that it usually has, and the sugar is very integrated. They produced 35,000 bottles. It was bottled in June 2024. - Reviewed by: Luis Gutiérrez

JANCIS ROBINSON 18 points
Inky black with narrow purple rim. Intense but restrained black and blue fruit, blackcurrant and elderberry. Dark and charry. Grainy tannins, firm, and so dark on the palate. Refined even with these grainy tannins. Deep sweetness of blueberry fruit but finishes much drier than you would expect with nearly 100 g/l RS. Chewy and smooth at the same time, those tannins adding to the freshness. (JH)