There are nine types of port.
Port is wine produced in a region in Portugal known as Douro Valley, which covers the area that begins in the port city of Oporto and stretches east to the border with Spain. According to Wine Intro, a website providing basic information on wines, 48 different varieties of grapes are authorized for use in the making of port, a wine available in nine different types.
White
White port comes in two varieties, sweet and dry, and it is made of one of four white grapes: Viosinho, Arinto, Gouveio or Malvasia. This type of port is served chilled before meals to stimulate your appetite.
Ruby
Ruby port is a wine made of a blend of different aged red wines. After the mixture is prepared, the wine is ready for drinking without needing additional aging. According to Wine Intro, this is the basic red port and it tastes like berries with some mild bitterness.
Tawny
Tawny port is a red-grape wine aged in wood casks. It has a nutty flavor and pale color. Tawny ports aged for a minimum of seven years are called reserve tawny.
Crusted
Crusted port is almost a crude wine, created by the British as an inexpensive beverage and made of a combination of several unfiltered port wines from different harvests. The name of this port refers to the lack of filtration, which causes sediment to settle on the bottle's bottom, forming a crust.
Late-Bottled Vintage
Smoother than vintage port, late-bottled vintage port is produced from one harvest and spends several years in a barrel before being bottled. Once packaged, this wine is ready for drinking and no more aging is necessary.
Vintage
Twice-aged, the high-quality vintage port spends years in an oak cask and must be aged again once it's bottled. It's not unusual for this single-harvest wine to spend 10 to 30 years in a cellar before it's considered ready for consumption.
Vintage Character
Vintage character port is not vintage wine, but aged to appear as though it's made from one single harvest. In reality, this is a wine blend of several grape crops, aged four to six years before being bottled and sold.
Single Quinta
Single quinta port comes from grapes harvested in the same wine-grape estate, or quinta. Like vintage port, this wine is also aged before and after bottling. If the product's final quality is less than what's desired in a single quinta, the wine is then used in blends for ruby and tawny ports.
Colheita
"Colheita" is the Portuguese word for "harvest." Colheita port is produced from one single harvest and aged in an oak barrel for at least seven years. This aging process turns the wine pale and gives it a nutty flavor, which also leaves a fruity aftertaste in your mouth.
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