For The Love Of Port

Tom - I'm more than tempted but I am looking to move house this week. I could be a bit busy.

Do what my grandfather used to do:

Go to work as usual and come home to a different address...

(my grandmother was a frequent and efficient house-mover)

Tom

Since Tom mentioned a couple of weeks ago that we would be trying one of these mystery bottles I have been very excited. In truth finding the 'Holy Grail' had never been on my mind.

At 7pm on Thursday I collected the bottle from my office and wandered over to the Angel hotel and met Tom at the bar, during our time at the bar a number of people were showing due interest in our apparatus that lay on the bar, decanter, tongs old unknown bottle......

Eventually it was time, especially as we were being egged on by two rather dubious characters at the one end of the bar. Tom methodically swilled a dram of port inside the decanter and then set about pulling the cork. The first half inch had nothing on it at all, and then.........

FANTASTIC..even the twoscrupulous characters at the bar were silenced by what we had found.

The first thing that must be commented upon was the fantastic, deep, intense colour, not something that I would expect from such maturity.

The first glass was poured and passed around the bar,

sheer class....... Elegant, balanced, perfect depth and vigour.

TN

Clear and wonderfully bright, deep and rich colour, leading to brick tawny. Not youthful but still fantastic colour considering that the wine is 75 yrs old

Pronounced, vibrant aromas of dry rich fruit, hints of spice, liocquorice, dark chocolate and moccha with touches of coffee bean bitterness.

In the mouth, wonderful, still very rich and full. I felt that in the mouth there was a touch of sweetness, something Tom and I disagreed on, which led to a very long dry finish. Very much as for the nose, full dense body/raisiny rich and slight bitterness. Very elegant and classy, blended with lovely warm alcohol.

A very long rich dry finish, fantastic depth and vigour and I would suggest there is still plenty of life left.

What hits you is quality. Fantastic depth and vigour, wonderful colour. Sheer overwhelming class. Found only in certain bottles and I have been privileged to taste one

Fabulous story and thank you Tom for participating here. What an amazing experience. It is still not clear, at least to me, if this was the regular bottling of Quinta do Noval or if it was the Nacional. IF the latter, what was on the cork?

The full text on the cork is:

QUINTA DO NOVAL

1931

VINTAGE

The first letters of Q, N and V are slightly enlarged. There is a small idiosyncrasy with the presentation of the number 3, - which I will reserve for the verification of any doubtful bottles.

Tom

Tom,

That is the strangest cork branding I have eer seen

Derek

Now that was darn funny Derek!

In theory, the only other Vintage it could be would have been the 1991 and obviously nobody is mixing that up.

Hmmm, I thought you didn't edit posts Mr Hersh?

Derek

Only to try and stop the wave of Port, er ... I mean Porn we've been inundated with. Anything else?

I'm confused :? - Tom's post changed after I posted the follow-on note but it didn't have an "edit" note at the bottom. By the time Roy followed my post, Tom's post looked like it does now. There is now a note saying that Tom did edit the post but he did this 1 hour after Roy and I exchanged posts.

Perhaps that Kopke 1985 was better than I thought

Derek

I only edited it, because I signed it twice by mistake.

While I was composing it, I did try to use the formatting tools to show the text in a more lifelike fashion, but when I hit Preview, the tools didn't function correctly.

Did the preview version become visible prematurely?

One for admin..

Tom

What you previewed was certainly visible - I assumed Roy had re-formatted it for you after reading my posting - if not, there are gremlins at work

Derek