The Kenneth Green Vintage Fortified is a vintage fortified style wine commemorating Kenneth Green, Josh Davenport’s Grandfather. Kenneth married Nancy, the last of the Myatts here is Australia. He was an English Gentleman he loved his cricket, he loved his claret and both those legacies were passed on to Josh.
Touriga Nacional, the classic Portuguese port grape is grown in our Carmel Valley vineyard and is the primary source of fruit for this wine.
We pick the Touriga National with moderate shrivelled or raisin berries and in traditional portuguese style, fruit for this wine is foot stomped. It’s a terrible job because the fruit is chilled first and at 5º it doesn’t take long for the whole lower half of your body to go numb.
The period of fermentation is quite a short one because we want to retain a lot of the natural sugars and fermentation consists of 4 or 5 days fermentation on skins.
We fortify with a mixed spirit, it’s a 30% brandied spirit with a 70% SVR or neutral spirit. We do this to get some complexity from the brandy spirit but the neutral spirit helps to keep the purity of fruit flavour.
The wine doesn’t see a long time in oak, only 6 months before bottling. This is so it can do all its growing up in bottle.