2000-2009 VP's

[Roy Hersh]

Over the course of the past decade, which are your favorites for VP and LBV?

Also if you had to pick a "dark horse" vintage for VPs from the aforementioned vintage range ... which one year would you select to be the biggest surprise in 20 years from now?

[Ray Barnes]

I have not had as many as most of the members here, but my favourite VP is the 2003 Taylor, tasted recently under very difficult personal circumstances (details in the tasting note), and earlier this year in happier times, the 2003 Quinta do Noval LBVP.

Ray

[Tom Archer]

I would not be surprised if 2009 emerges as the best year of the decade, after which 2003 looks the most solid, and set fair for a fine future (although 2000 is not far behind)

No prizes for calling 2002 & 2006 as the lemons of the noughties, although those who picked early in 2002, or avoided the hail in 2006; have nevertheless produced some decent wines.

For me, the dark horses are 2001 & 2005.

One of the most respected smaller producers maintains that 2001 was a better year than 2000, and that the date swayed the decision; however it's hard to confirm that, as there's not an awful lot of 2001 around to try. One of the big shippers made an LBV that year that was well below their usual standard, whilst on the other hand, the Vargellas is an impressive wine that is far from mature.

2005 was a year of extreme weather, which suited some, but not others. Some of the VPs made that year are beasts that will outlive most of the other wines made in the decade. The LBVs I've tried from '05 have been universally good.

Tom

[Moses Botbol]

I'll throw in 2007 as the vintage of the decade. Why? Why not! Well, the general quality across the board for all wines coming out of the Douro is just fantastic for this vintage. 2007 could be the new "1970". A well declared vintage.

I find odd that in the two responses already, 2007 was not mentioned. This is a hard decade to rate as 2000, 2003, and 2005 had turned out so many vintages.

[Tom Archer]

2007 could be the new "1970"

There is a dichotomy of styles in the '07 vintage, that makes me think the vintage will develop more like 1980 than 1970, with some VPs reaching maturity relatively early, while others take much longer.

With it's broad field of sound, slowly maturing VPs, 2003 looks a much more likely successor to 1970 IMO..

..and there's more than a sporting chance that 2011 will be even better..

Tom

[Glenn E.]

2003 has two of my favorite Ports of the decade - the Noval VP and the Taylor LBV. But I also really like the 2000 Vesuvio VP and a couple of the 2007s, notably the Vale Meao VP.

My guess is that 2003 will be the vintage of the decade. I really like 2007 but there seems to be more structure in 2003 so I think they'll ultimately be longer-lived. The general declaration in 2000 was just too convenient so I question its authenticity. Not that some of the Ports aren't great, but there are some really good 1999s and 2001s as well. Plus it just really annoys me that everyone celebrates 2000 when in fact the new millenium started on January 1st, 2001.

2005 is my pick for the sleeper year of the decade. I think it probably could have been declared in a different decade, but it wasn't really needed on the heels of 2000 and 2003. The 2005 Vesuvio is top notch.

[David Spriggs]

Great question!

For VP it's 2003. I just love the style of these wines. Favorites are Fonseca and Vesuvio. The vintage was very consistant to me.
Not to say that 2009 is not in the same league. It might be, but I haven't tasted enough to evaluate.

For LBV..... 2003 again! My favorites are Niepoort and Noval.

I beginning to like the 2000 vintage more and more. It wasn't a favorite of mine on release. The Graham's is stunning. I really did not like 2007. So for dark horse vintage I'll pick 2007. I could be surprised at how good these wines are after many years in bottle. Another dark horse vintage is 2001, which lately I've been enjoying.

[Rob C.]

Noval 2007 gets it for me in terms of an individual pick, but 2007 is the only widely declared vintage i got to try in its first couple of years, so not really a fair comparison. My general experience of 2003s at the moment is that they seem less expressive than the 2007s (and 2000s seem completely closed), but perhaps that's just the stage of evolution where each is at. I will be interested to try some of the 2009s soon - I hear that TFP rate it above 2000 and 2007 but behind 2003 as a vintage.

For lbv i've only tasted up to 2006 at the moment (is Niepoort the only 2007 lbv currently released?), so might be a premature pick. 2003 had some great ones (esp. Noval), but other favourites were 2004 Quevedo and 2004 Dow master blend. For filtered lbvs, i actually thought that 2005 might have had the edge on 2003 (at least for Graham). Top picks for me though would be the Warre 2000 and 2001 unfiltered. Big, tremendous wines, i would not be suprised to see them still going strong in 20 yrs time. But then, there's not a huge price jump from the Warre to a modest VP...£20 vs £25 for Niepoort 2003 VP for instance...

Crusteds were left out of the original question, but I hear on good authority that the Niepoort 2009 crusted will be spectacular!

Plus it just really annoys me that everyone celebrates 2000 when in fact the new millenium started on January 1st, 2001.

hmm - most people i know tend to think of decades in terms of 70s, 80s, 90s etc. - celebrating the year 2000 was just an extension of this - a new "decade" in common parlance and therefore by extension also a new century/millenium.

Or are you saying that Roy should not have referred to 2000-2009 as the "past decade" and should instead have waited for a year to ask what the best VPs from 2001 - 2010 were...?!

[Moses Botbol]

Would be great if some of the producers chimed in, even if an "off the record" response.

[Glenn E.]

hmm - most people i know tend to think of decades in terms of 70s, 80s, 90s etc. - celebrating the year 2000 was just an extension of this - a new "decade" in common parlance and therefore by extension also a new century/millenium.

Therein lies the problem. Any 10 consecutive years can be referred to as a decade, but a proper decade (or century, or millenium) starts with a year ending in 1 and ends with a year ending in 0 (a multiple of 10). It's fine to refer to the 90s as a decade, but it is incorrect to say that the end of the 90s (1990-1999) was also the end of the 2nd millenium. Another way to say it is that "20th century" and "the 1900s" don't refer to the same period of time.

The 1900s run from 1900 through 1999. The 20th century runs from 1901 through 2000. If you're having a hard time seeing the difference, enumerate the years from the 1st decade: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9... and 10. Starts with a 1, ends with a multiple of 10. If you try to end it with year 9 you don't have 10 years because there is no year 0.

So blame Prince. The people who were "partying like it's 1999" were incorrectly celebrating the end of the 2nd millenium, which at the time was still a year away.

And no, they weren't celebrating the end of the 1990s. They weren't even celebrating the end of the 1000s. I clearly remember all of the hype about the end of the millenium - and it was all incorrect.

[Tom Archer]

Glenn,

Although you may be correct in a strict academic sense, the reality is that people overwhelmingly start their perception of a decade at year 0 and end it at year 9.

Culture evolves, and there's not a lot of virtue in trying to stop it in its tracks.

For example, the strict meaning of the term 'to decimate' is to reduce by one tenth, yet it is now common parlance to use the term when far greater death or destruction has occurred.

The correct British definition of the term 'one billion' is one million million, but we now accept the American definition of one thousand million - things move on..

The issue today is how to describe the decade we are now in - people seem to reluctantly accept that the 'nineties' were followed by the 'noughties' - but are we now in the 'tenses'? - It just doesn't sound right..

Tom

[Glenn E.]

Although you may be correct in a strict academic sense, the reality is that people overwhelmingly start their perception of a decade at year 0 and end it at year 9.

People, overwhelmingly, are sheep. They just go along with whatever the idiots in control of mass media tell them.

We're talking about different things. The 90s correctly start with 1990 and end with 1999. The 200th decade, however, starts with 1991 and ends with 2000.

The point being that the 3rd millenium didn't start on January 1, 2000. It started on January 1, 2001. There's no "public perception" that can change that - it's a mathematical fact. If people had been celebrating the start of the 2000s they'd have been fine... but they weren't, they were celebrating the new millenium that mass media was hyping so they were wrong.

Stanley Kubrick got it right. Prince got it wrong.

The issue today is how to describe the decade we are now in - people seem to reluctantly accept that the 'nineties' were followed by the 'noughties' - but are we now in the 'tenses'? - It just doesn't sound right..

That's easy - we're in the 202nd decade.

I think of it more as "the decade of the 90s" or "the decade of the noughties" which are both mathematically accurate and convergent with popular culture. That then makes it easy to go with the decade of the teens. Though that sounds just as wrong since it won't really be the teens until 2013. '11' and '12' have always messed that up.

[Tom Archer]

People, overwhelmingly, are sheep. They just go along with whatever the idiots in control of mass media tell them.

Dangerous territory, my friend...

..such arrogant attitudes gave us the eurozone, and the Iraq war..

Better that the people know the truth, and that every effort is made to prevent the democratic process from being corrupted by vested interests..

Tom

[Tom D.]

Wow, I think this initially interesting thread has been pretty much killed.

[Glenn E.]

Better that the people know the truth

You mean like the truth that the 3rd millenium started on January 1, 2001?

[Markus L.]

The 3rd millennium started on 2001. That's a fact. Just because lots of people, guided by mass media, celebrated a year early only shows they didn't understand chronology. It's a waste of time to debate about this, especially here.

So why not turn this back to debating about things which can't be proven one way or the other? Like, for example, which vintage is the best in the ten-year period starting 2000 and ending 2009?

[Ray Barnes]

I concur with recent observations that the discussion in this area has taken a very different focus than what had been initiated. If it was the intent of the one who opened this topic to seek opinions on the best VPs and LBVs over the first decade of the 21st century, I believe such an exchange of opinions ought to have been conducted in an air of conviviality, rather than cavil about when the decade in question began and ended, and proceed from there to complain about other issues. I am sure all of us have grievances of one form or another about a variety of issues, and there are several other avenues available for expressing them.

The forum in general offers a much needed diversion from life's and especially the media's overwhelmingly negative atmosphere, and I would feel happier if it was kept that way - unless one has negative comments to make about Portugese wine.

[Tom Archer]

You mean like the truth that the 3rd millenium started on January 1, 2001

Only because there was no year zero. Whoever ordained that 1BC was to be immediately followed by 1AD was no mathematician..

..and checking the dictionaries lying around my house, the word decade has no fixed starting point, it can be any period of ten years..

But enough, moving back to topic - which of the last ten 'popular' decades was the best, and which the worst?

The noughties put up a pretty strong challenge - better I think (marginally) than the nineties, but better than the 60's? - a hard call, and the twenties are in much the same league..

..although there is one very big exception to the rule, the decade that has left us with the weakest legacy of wines looks to be the thirties, although that was mainly a consequence of economic calamity and over-production in the preceding decade..

..anyone get a sense of deja-vu....?

Tom

[Roy Hersh]

I have been watching this thread go further and further away from Port.

I am not going to delete the posts that have gone off target, but will do so from here forward. I'd appreciate it if we could please get back to the crux of the bisquit, which is VP and LBV from 2000-2009.

[Glenn E.]

My apologies. It's a pet peeve, so naturally I lose focus when discussing it.

Back to topic -

In summary, 2003 for me with 2005 as the sleeper.

We seem to do a lot of this sort of prognosticating about Vintage Port. Anyone want to hazard a guess about Tawnies? On the down side, it'll probably be decades before you know whether or not you're right.