n/v Quinta de la Rosa Finest Reserve Port

[Tom Archer]

A TN on a Reserve? Yes, and very worthy of the note.

Tom Chadwick's auction house (J. Straker Chadwick) had a lot in it's last sale that caught my eye - 6 bottles of Rosa '88 VP plus 4 halves of Rosa Finest Reserve.

It caught my eye because '88 was the first year for Rosa after it shook off the big shippers, and reverted to Lagare treading in place of the now discredited 'Movimosto' system.

Indeed, I believe they can claim to have pioneered the reversion.

I barely priced in the halves of Reserve when setting my bid - I assumed they would be stoppered, and would be useful for rinsing decanters (having just exhausted my bottle of Tesco Ruby).

So I was a little surprised to find that these little bottles had neatly driven corks, but very modest lables with no bottling date.

I popped one last night and 'did a Derek' on it without decanting.

Wow! - a full, rich and well dimensioned little wine with loads of flakey sediment - no negative attributes, and easily the best Reserve I can recall -well able to hold it's own in much more elevated company.

But a question nags me -

Why didn't they put the bottling date on the label, ands sell it as Crusted? - for that is what it is, and very much at the top end of that league.

But as a reserve, it can only be scored as a 10-10

Tom