Semi-Great Vintage Port Tasting

Vintage 1958

Our wine club 'The Wine Society 18%' celebrates its 23^rd anniversary this year. Since 2005 we have once a year had a Great Tasting of either a Vintage or a house. We are 15 members and have five meetings per year and then some extra every now and then. As we are only 15 members, we can have quite rare bottles in our tastings since one bottle is enough. The meetings are in Malmö, Sweden. In November we have had Great Tastings and we have previously arranged such tastings of 1947, 1960, 1963 (twice), 1966, 1970, 1975, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1982, 1984 and 1988 and three times House Tastings which were Cockburn, Ferreira and Fonseca-Guimaraens.

We have found out that 20 different houses is a reasonable quantity needed to call it a Great Tasting so this tasting of the vintage 1958 is what we call a Semi-Great Tasting, as we had only 13 houses and 1 extra Old and Selected Tawny bottled on the 21st of May, 1958.

We were 17 participants in the tastings. We often have guests and if you are visiting Malmö, please let us know and you can maybe participate next time. The tasting was semi-blind i.e. we knew which houses participated but not what we had in each glass.

The vintage 1958 is today 58 years old but the wines were very good and elegant on the whole with a lot of old sweetness and a balanced acidity. They were all very attractive in the finish and very easy to enjoy and drink! Maybe a bit surprisingly Gonzalez-Byass ended up in the top together with more well-known Sandeman and Warre's.

The 1958 Vintage is to be regarded as one of the classic Vintages, and we know of 21 houses who had declared this vintage and we know of 42 different brands from this vintage. After a cold and rainy summer, the beginning of October was very hot and the harvests were held under perfect conditions. However, some companies did not declare production because of the proximity of the excellent 1955 Vintage.

According to Broadbent 12 shippers declared this vintage. Broadbent gave this vintage *** out of 5*, Suckling 84 points out of 100 i.e. a Good Vintage. We rated it as Very Good Vintage and gave it 7 out of 10 points.

The bottles from the tasting.

Warre's and Quinta do Noval

Tasting notes. Note that the points are for the actual bottle tasted. Read about how we set point on the page "How to understand our points valuations"

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