Author Archives: Stefan

Our Easter tasting

During Easter we tasted the Vintage 1942. It is a very rare Vintage for us, just one of us had tasted this year before. The two bottles we tasted were excellent and much better than we had believed. It was Sandeman and Graham’s we tasted and especially the Graham’s developed in a fantastic way in the glass but they were both equally good. Have any of you enjoyed a 1942 recently? Please inform us about your opinion.

In addition, we tasted Quinta do Jordao for the very first time. The quinta is better known as Quinta do Sibio, and under that name we have tasted it four times in the past. We had managed to get hold of two different vintages, 1950 and 1958, of Quinta do Jordao, and they were astonishingly good.

Have you tasted this Quinta or do you know of any other vintages from this Quinta? We do not!

Kopke Vintage Port tasting

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At the Wine Society 18% we arranged a tasting on the 21st of March of the oldest port house – Kopke. Kopke is perhaps more known for their Tawnies and cheaper ports but they have been producing Vintage Port since the 19th century.
We started the evening with the 300 years jubilee dry tawny (1638 – 1938). It was a very typical nice tawny with a very dry style. It was probably not meant to be kept for another 75 years but it was still a very decent and fresh wine.

For the tasting we had set up eleven, what we thought would be, mature and nice Vintages. The oldest from 1970 and the youngest from 1997.

The following Vintage Ports were in the tasting:

Vintage 1997
Vintage 1996
Vintage 1995
Vintage 1994
Vintage 1991
Vintage 1987 Quinta Sao Luiz
Vintage 1985
Vintage 1979 Quinta Sao Luiz
Vintage 1979
Vintage 1974
Vintage 1970

The first three were still very young. Both Vintages 1997 and 1996 still have some juicy fruit and the 1996 showed a very impressive concentration in the fruit.
Vintage 1994 was a disappointment, perhaps it was because it was served from half-bottles (they normally mature faster). If the 1994 was disappointing the 1991 was more as expected from a Vintage port just over twenty years. It was perfectly mature with nice soft tannins and a very good balance. The 1985 Vintage was very similar to the 1991 but with a larger body and in fact a bit more to go. The 1987 Quinta Sao Luiz was not quite ok, it had a strange and not so attractive bouquet, some kind of defect in this particular bottle.

All four Vintages from the 1970’s were very elegant and nice. It was interesting to taste both the ordinary Kopke and the Single Quinta from Sao Luiz from the same Vintage – 1979. We actually had the Kopke 1979 in a tasting of the 1979 Vintage last month and it showed the exact same elegancy and long soft style this time. The Quinta Sao Luiz was actually a bit better, with some more complexity, even if they were very similar. The 1974 was very mature and over its peak, but still ok.
Finally we had the Vintage 1970. This is a fantastic perfectly mature Vintage Port. It shows all the elegancy and complexity a mature Vintage Port can have and it was the outstanding top scorer of the evening.

For points and tasting notes see our Kopke page and Quinta Sao Luiz page.

Semi-Great Vintage Port Tasting 1979

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Vintage 1979

First we would like to announce that after about 18 months this web site has now reached 25,000 visitors!! We are of course very happy and proud to see the great interest from all over the world.

Last week we were all participating in the first of several planned 20^th anniversary tastings of the Wine Society 18%. We have decided to hold some extra tastings during the year 2013 and we started our celebration with a Vintage tasting of 1979.

This Vintage was an off vintage, and was judge as Average. The large producers did not declare, they instead declared their Single Quinta Vintages like Quinta do Bomfim (Dow’s) and Quinta da Cavadinha (Warre’s). According to the Port Wine Institute only 13 houses declared. Michael Broadbent gave this vintage ** out of 5*, Suckling gave it 74 points out of 100 points.

We call it Semi-Great because we had only 11 Vintages and not 20 Vintages which is our limit for calling it a Great Tasting. In addition to the 11 Vintages we had two extra ports from 1979, LBV 1979 from Smith-Woodhouse, bottled in 1984 and Colheita 1979 from Niepoort, bottled in 1988. Both extra wines were included in the tasting and were given points. The Smith-Woodhouse LBV had Group points 15.63 and Group Ranking 7 and Niepoort’s Colheita 1979 had Group Points 14.7 and Group Ranking 11.

Most of the Vintage Ports showed a very mature pale tawny like colour, but they were surprisingly fresh in the glass and many of them showed a nice elegancy even if they were a bit over their peak. Two of eleven bottles were unfortunately too old.

As usual the Vintages from the Symingtons (Quinta da Cavadinha, Quinta do Bomfim and Grahams Malvedos) were very well preserved, being a bit darker in colour and still some fruit in the taste. We agreed that Quinta do Bomfim and Grahams Malvedos were the best.

Danish bottled unknown 1960 Vintage Port

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Few weeks ago we had a bottle of 1960 Vintage Port bottled by a Danish wine merchant – Fredriksberg Vinimport A/S. As you can see from the picture there was no indication of the producer on the label or anywhere else on the bottle. Since it was imported on barrel and bottled in Denmark by Fredriksberg Vinimport the cork did not reveal the secret either.

The quality of the Port was really nice and it turned out to be perfectly mature and still holding a rich rather sweet bouquet of toffee and fudge. This was followed by a soft elegant taste, perhaps not as long lasting in the mouth as the best 1960 Vintage Ports but still very lovely.

Do any of our Danish visitors know which house Fredriksberg Vinimport used to bottle at this time? The current owners of the Fredriksberg Vinimport Company have kindly responded that they do not have any records from that time.

When it comes to the certificate on the label it is stating ‘Certificado de Origem de Vinho Do Porto. No. 11193’, we have never seen this on any Vintage Port before. What does it mean? It does not even say who has certified the wine, it is just a number. The normal way to guarantee a Vintage Port today is by using the slip label over the cork, but this seems to be something completely different. Do any of our many Portuguese visitors know what the certificate is saying? We have tried to get information about the certificate but nobody seems to know about it?

Please also note that we have a page titled Help needed. Unfortunately we have not got any help at all during the years. We are sure that some of you could actually help us finding the truth about some of these questions we have. For instance we have not found any information about some of the producers we have seen and even tasted. Please check the page and see if you can help making this web site even better.

1933 Double Quinta Vintage Port

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We would like to thank you all for visiting our web site and for all supPORT. Last year was fantastic with more visitors than we could ever dream of. We had around 19.000 visitors during 2012 from 94 different countries. December is as you know a great month for drinking Port and during this month we had 3556 visitors from 67 countries with a peak at Christmas Eve with 271 visitors! On the 15^th of January we reached 100 different countries visiting us and now in the end of January 107 countries have done a visit. Please continue sending suggestions so we can improve our web site. We appreciate all the positive feedback and will continue to evolve the web site with more information and more features in the future. And don’t worry; we will continue to provide all this for free!

We have changed the web site so you can now add comments and answer our posts directly on the page.

During summer we had a Calem from 1933 where the label told us that the vintage was from two different quintas: Quinta da Foz and Quinta Santo Antonio. Have anyone seen two different quintas on the same label before? We cannot remember seeing such a Double Quinta Vintage Port before.

Christmas Vintage Ports

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Hope you all enjoyed the hollidays and had some great Vintage Ports, we sure did.

During Christams we enjoyed, for the first time, Vintage Port from the Vintage 1900. We had both Gilbeys and Quinta do Sibio. They were both very attractive and nice but perhaps not quite as big as we had expected. However, the houses were not the great ones. Have anyone had a 1900 Vintage Port lately and what was the impression?

During Christmas we also for the first time had the 1932 Vintage. The houseses are well-known, Butler-Nephew and Gonzalez-Byass but the Port were rather weak and tawny like. Even if 1932 is a weak vintage we had perhaps expected more. Have anyone had a 1932 during the last year? What do you think?