Multi: 1995 LBV Port Horizontal – Traditional Single Quinta LBVs

[Steven Kooij]

Last Sunday it was time to continue diminishing my collection of Late Bottled Vintage Port from 1995. Ronnie & Lady Roots kindly offered their help again for this 6th episode of LBV ’95-tasting.
This would be the first time we tried “traditional” or “unfiltered” LBVs. For this tasting, I selected the following (all bottled in 1999):

Quinta do Castelinho (€ 12)
Quinta das Heredias (€ 18)
Quinta de la Rosa (€ 12)
Quinta do Passadouro (€ 16,50)
Messias – Quinta do Cachão (€ 15)

The Ports were decanted one hour and a half before serving. As usual, we tasted them single blind, and ratings were given before revealing the identity of the bottles at the end of the tasting.

Quinta do Castelinho 1995 LBV – bottled 1999. Unhealthy brick red. Not very outspoken on the nose, artificially sweet, chemical fruits, somewhat dusty (but not corked). Medium thick, glycerolic. Very sharp on the midpalate, and lacking in fruit. Very sweet and hot going down, some acidity and a green stem bitterness. Not even average: 68 points. Blegh!

Quinta de la Rosa 1995 LBV – bottled 1999. Showing some maturity, but still very dark. Very strange nose: this smelled like the beach – silt, floodline, wet wood. Not unappealing (in fact I liked it), but not something one expects to find in a Port. Pretty thin bodied, but still with some tannins left. On the sweet side, some pepper, some leather. One-dimensional, boring. Nice finish though, smooth and with dried figs. 77 points, drink now.

Messias 1995 Quinta do Cachão LBV – bottled 1999. Not very outspoken on the nose, but good: dried figs, rosebuds. Somewhat alcoholic (although this blew off with some more waltzing). Medium bodied, well structure and great balance. This is fully mature, with secondary flavours dominating the midpalate. Lovely finish, fresh, is somewhat spicy hot as well. 85 points, drink now.
What a surprise when this turned out to be the Messias! I had never expected it to be this good.

Quinta das Heredias 1995 LBV – bottled 1999. Impressive, extremely impressive…how can one manage to make a Port THIS awful? Ridiculously disgusting – utter crap. Time has not been kind to this LBV; when I tasted it last in May last year I gave this 68 points…now it receives 58. Avoid!

Quinta do Passadouro 1995 LBV – bottled 1999. Ah, we’re home again! The three of us had just to sniff this to identify this as the Passadouro (we tasted it a few times already). This still smells young, in fact it open up considerably in glass. Loads of dark berry fruit. Supple structure, good fruit, some secondary notes (especially tobacco). Warm, chocolaty finish: delicious. This one should be able to age for a few more years. 89 points.

The Passadouro was the clear winner of the evening, but the real surprise was the Messias – proving again the value of blind tasting. The next tasting will most like consist of Niepoort, Warre, Ramos-Pinto and Wiese-Krohn.