TN: 2012 Dalva LBV

[Lucas S]

2012 Dalva Late Bottled Vintage Unfiltered

Notably, this was bottled in 2018, thus presumably barrel-aged on the longer side of the 4-6 year range.

Tasted at opening, after 14 hours decanting, and 36 hours decanting. Not blind.

Initial aroma was unfortunately reminiscent of medicine along with tar, pineapple, & pomegranate, but thankfully that medicinal aroma went away with sufficient decanting.

Fairly dry, not particularly acidic, and only mildly tannic, there is a chili pepper burn early on which also largely dissipated with decanting. Mostly red fruit here and bit of cassis and cherry, but overall a rather neutral flavor and grew into being easy to drink.

The Port seemed quite muted at first, but apparently that's just how it is. Even after decanting, it stayed a fairly neutral and mellow flavor. After 36 hours it reminded me of a Q. da Romaneira Fine Ruby I had recently which was pretty good and also slightly medicinal.

It might be in a weird phase at the moment, I would risk giving this an extra 2-3 years to settle down a bit more and it could be solid.

Be sure to give this a very long decant of at least a day, it went from unappealing-would-not-drink-again (and cloudy) in the first 24 hours to pretty-decent-would-drink-again at the 36 hour mark and later. 88