Why it matters
The producer
The name on the product record is Quinta and Vineyard Bottlers, while the wine itself carries the Wiese & Krohn history. Wiese & Krohn began in 1865, founded by the Norwegian cousins Theodor Wiese and Dankert Krohn, and built its reputation on old Ports matured in cask, especially Colheitas. A Colheita is a Port from one harvest, aged in wood until the fruit takes on the flavours of time: dried fruit, spice, tobacco and cocoa.
Quinta and Vineyard Bottlers-Vinhos S.A. entered the Portuguese company register in 1997 with ordinary and fortified wine production as its registered activity. The exact current operating relationship between that company and Krohn is not established here, so the useful connection is the bottle itself: Krohn Colheita Port 2003 is attributed to Wiese & Krohn and the Douro, with Quinta and Vineyard Bottlers named as producer on the Swedish listing.
Place and vineyards
Where the wines begin
Krohn's physical Douro centre is Quinta do Retiro Novo, a 17-hectare vineyard estate at Sarzedinho, a small village in the Rio Torto Valley. The property is classified as class A under the Douro vineyard-points system, a legal and agricultural ranking based on the value assigned to vineyard factors. The estate's place therefore reaches the bottle through both geography and category: the wine is Douro Port, while Colheita identifies a single harvest matured in cask.
No grape variety is named for the 2003 lot. Its label vocabulary instead carries the essential map: Douro gives the place, 2003 gives the harvest, and Colheita gives the wine's single-vintage tawny style and long wood-aged path.
In the cellar
Vineyards and cellar
Quinta do Retiro Novo covers 17 hectares on sloping ground at Sarzedinho. Its class A classification records the high vineyard rating assigned under the Douro points system, while the estate's own account puts low productivity, altitude, soil and location alongside the slopes as favourable to wine production. The vineyard supplies the scale and site context behind Krohn's Vintage Ports.
Colheita follows a different path. The wine comes from one harvest and spends its development in cask, allowing ripe fruit to move toward preserved cherry, dried fruit, spice, tobacco and cocoa.
Wines to know
The range in view
Krohn's range has two distinct branches. Colheita is the cask-aged, single-harvest side, where the vintage stays visible on the label and the wine develops through time in wood. Vintage Port is the estate-led side, sourced from Quinta do Retiro Novo, the 17-hectare class A property in the Rio Torto Valley.
Krohn Colheita Port 2003 is the most fully documented bottle in the range. It brings concentrated ripe cherry and preserved-cherry fruit, vibrant acidity, a firm creamy texture, and a full finish marked by spice, flowers, dried fruit, tobacco and cocoa. The 2003 also carries dark fruit and a strongly vinous profile, giving this Colheita a more youthful, ruby-like impression than the mature tawny character commonly associated with long-aged examples.
A useful way in
A bottle to begin with
Krohn Colheita Port 2003 is the bottle to open first: a single-harvest Douro Port attributed to Wiese & Krohn, with Quinta and Vineyard Bottlers named as producer on the Swedish listing. It combines the style's cask-aged history with a surprisingly youthful profile, bringing ripe and preserved cherry, vibrant acidity, a creamy, firm palate and a long finish of spice, dried fruit, tobacco and cocoa. It gives a clear taste of what makes Colheita different from Vintage Port: one harvest, followed through wood, with the vintage still at the centre of the label.