Are they past their best?

[Jm24]

Hi there, am a novice after some advice! I have some bottles of Calem 1990 colheita (bottled in 1999).

Someone suggested these should have been drunk already and are probably past their best - are they right?

[jdaw1]

A colheita should last ages. There’s no hurry to drink them. Nor a reason not to.

[PhilW]

Some prefer colheita in the first 1-2 years after bottling, so could be considered by some as past their best, but as JDAW says if they have been kept well they last a long time; unless kept in very poor conditions yours should be fine to drink and can often still be very good after many, many years.

[DRT]

A colheita should last ages.

JDAW is absolutely correct. A colheita should last ages, provided it is in a wooden cask.

Unless specifically bottled with further aging in mind (such as Niepoort and not many (or any?) others) they will deteriorate over time as they have been stabilised (fined/filtered) prior to bottling, which renders them inert and not capable of further "aging" in the true sense of the word. As Phil has alluded to there are some people who think a colheita with a few years of bottle age is preferable. I would class "a few years" as about five. More than that and you are keeping it longer than the blender intended. The blender is invariably correct.

I have had a number of long-bottled colheitas that have acquired a hazy appearance, a brown gloopy sediment and a toffee character that is not entirely pleasant. Those were bottles that should have been drunk twenty years before I bought and opened them.

I would suggest you have been given good advice, which you should follow

[Glenn E.]

All pretty good advice so far.

In a freshly bottled Colheita, the acidity is generally "fresher", brighter, and crisper, which many believe is what makes them great. As the time in bottle increases, that perception of the acidity slowly changes, becoming smoother and more mellow. With too much time in bottle, though, most (but not all) Colheitas will start to feel flat and lifeless.

The amount of time this takes varies from producer to producer, and also varies based on the amount of time the Colheita spent in wood before being bottled. A Colheita with 80 years in wood will last far longer in bottle than a (relatively) simple entry level Colheita like the 1990 Calem you have. A Niepoort of any age will last far longer in bottle than a Graham or Taylor because of the way that they are made.

In my opinion, a Colheita with 30-40 years in wood is absolutely fine with 5-8 years in bottle. Possibly as much as 10 from the right producer. (As are "30 Year Old" and "40 Year Old" tawnies.) 20 years in wood is probably best before 5 years. I don't really consider anything with less than 20 years in wood to be a real Colheita, though technically only 7 years in wood is required. It is my personal opinion that it takes 20 years in wood for a true wood-aged character to fully develop.

[uncle tom]

As a rule of thumb, producers with British names tend to heavily filter their tawnies and colheitas, making their keeping properties a little less predictable. Consequently these tawnies ought to be drunk fairly young, although I personally favour a decade or more of bottle age first.

Other producers tend to go easy on the filtration of their quality tawnies, giving them more scope for bottle aging, although with the notable exception of Niepoort, they keep little or no stock to age in their bottle stores.

Earlier this summer I shared a Ferreira 40yr tawny that had been bottled in 1971 with some senior members of the trade - all agreed that it had mellowed beautifully, and was in no sense over the hill.