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 wine grape is grown on our Carmel Valley vineyard, and is the primary source of fruit for this wine. We pick the Touriga Nacional with moderate shrivelled or raisined 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 short with just 4 or 5 days fermentation on skins to retain a lot of the natural sugars. The wine is fortified with a mixed spirit of 30% brandied spirit and 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 the bottle.