1977 Smith Woodhouse Vintage Port

[Todd Pettinger]

Smith Woodhouse Vintage Port [1977]
Being such experienced Port guys, I was delighted when Moses and Sean were both pleased by my contribution to this offline, which was the SW'77 VP. This is not a Port they see a lot of in Boston, and neither had tried this.
I was a lot less delighted once the bottle had its head chopped off by Sean's Port tongs and a cloudy Port emerged.

Light orange colour, not much red left. The nose of stewed tomatoes turned me off, and my initial fear was that I hauled this bottle all the way down from Canada only to find it corked. Sean and Moses both confirmed this was not the case, although the wine was very likely cooked instead. As the hours passed, less stewed tomato was present and more of the other dominant characteristic of the aroma evolved and strengthened: baked brown sugar. If you placed this Port in front of me blind, and I did not know it was wine, I might swear it was a bowl of oatmeal with brown sugar melted on top, or the crust of an apple pie (without the cinnamon.)

Very sweet on the palate. Once you got past the stewy nose, which I disliked immensely, it was a good Port. A good, 23 second length added a bit to the score, but ultimately, the stewed tomato/baked smell detracted and influenced the score in a negative fashion. As the night wore on, the stewed tomatoes blew off and the mouth-feel became smoother, I was convinced to revisit the score and possibly raise it a point, but it fell short of being a great Port and in the end only earned
88/89 pts

I was disappointed that the bottle that I brought was somewhat of a dud, although had we more time, this Port may have done a bit better with 7-12 hours of decanter time. It sure would have blown off some more of the stewy nose.