For The Love Of Port

Vintage Port 2003: votes from a Dutch jury

By Aad van der Werf

A panel of 6 tasters assessed 48 Vintage Ports of 2003 at the Portuguese Embassy in The Hague on the 19th of April 2006. What message can the international reader of Flying Wine Writer take along from this assessment?
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Please find out more here: http://www.flyingwinewriter.com/vintageport2006.php

Mario,

Thanks for posting the link. Roy manages to get quoted everywhere....

Interesting to see how well some of the shippers who are seen less frequently in the UK managed to score.

Alex

The diversity in scores (compared to WS and Roy) shows IMO the high overall quality of the vintage.

This tasting was also organized after the declaration of the 2000 vintage. The scoring then showed a similar pattern: ports that are approachable and pleasant now receive better scores than hard, tannic, difficult ports. If you use these results for short term enjoyment of the ports, you will not be disappointed. If you use it as recommendation for long time cellaring, it is of less use. I think this is also the reason why Taylor and Churchill were not even submitted to the tasting. Last time, the score for the Churchill (2000) was very low, and I don't think the jury would have rated the Taylor 2003 very high...

BTW, my comments are not meant as criticism of the tasting and tasters, merely to put the scores in perspective.

Interesting comments from Ronnie. I also find that when I taste a port, I am only really able to taste it and score it on the enjoyment it gives me at the time I drink it. I find it very tough to try (actually, I find it impossible) and give the wine a score for that time in its future when it will be at its peak.

All I can do is to admire the people who are able to do this and who have a track record that shows they can do it accurately.

Alex

I think Ronnie's comments are very sound. I don't really care if my scores are higher or lower than others. The only thing I know is that my scores are consistent on my own meter and guys in my tasting group find that I have a narrow guage of 80-100 points ... but they all say, "consistent." OK, so if a wine is under 80 points it means I could not even swallow it if I wanted to. 85 to me, is a wine that is average and I would drink but probably not buy knowingly.

That said, I provide a + if I see that a wine has a particularly strong upside potential above and beyond the cask sample score. I think I have tasted enough vintages of cask samples that I can make my way through dozens of these babies given a few days with each bottle. In that case, being able to project the future of the wines is something I pride myself on and although I would expect scores to vary over years or decades, having young and old Ports for a few decades ... I believe that I can tell where the wine will head in the future. I don't say this about any types of wine besides VP though.

I know that cask samples are fraught with many pratfalls for critics, panels and journalists. Can a particular producer ONLY offer these folks cask samples from their best lots? Sure! How would I know if they wanted to cheat by picking their best single barrel and sending a cask sample from that? But as I have said to Pierre Rovani ... if they are doing that to me, they are certainly doing that to him and Robert Parker too and that includes Bordeaux producers et al.

Anyway, this is the type of discussion that is far more fun in person over a bottle or two of great Port!