For The Love Of Port

Hi guys.

So some of you might know from others post by me my club was hosting a Colheita vs. Tawny tasting this past Friday. The point of the tasting was to match up colheitas from the same producer against a tawny that on paper had roughly the same age. The tasters were asked to give the wines a normal Parker score (They are new to this, so please do no go to much into the points giving as people are learning still and some are struggling a bit with the concept), chose what they preferred in each head to head battle and also tell us which was their wine of the night. The wines were served openly.

The outcome was somewhat surprising to me as I expected the 10 and 20 YO tawnies to pull ahead due to their blending of multiple years and often with older than the indicated age. For instance a lot of 10YO tawnies has some 8 YO, 10 and perhaps 16YO mother wine in them giving them an advantage over the colheita. Most don't really think a colheita comes into it's own before it has spend between 20-30 years in a barrel. But the result was the opposite. The 2 young colheitas won and so did the 2 elder tawnies. I don't really have an explanation for that... But let me hear what you think.

Burmester 2005 colheita beat the 10YO with 9 votes to 6

Niepoort 1994 colheita beat the 20YO with 11 votes to 3

Krohn 30YO beat the colheita with a 13 votes to 3

Kopke 40YO beat the colheita with 13 votes to 1.

Wine of the night was the Krohn 30YO sharply followed by the Kopke 40YO. But for me the real winner was the Krohn 1987. It was really really good and I had the 2 Krohns only separated by 1 point. (I am ÅP1 in the spreadsheet). When looking at the price also the 87 is roughly half the price of the 30YO. It is drinking extremely well already but I cannot compare it to the 76' as I have not yet tasted that one.

I love this theme. Well done.

Do you taste these pairs one at a time, or all nine wines at once? Do you ever taste blind?

John M. wrote:Do you taste these pairs one at a time, or all nine wines at once? Do you ever taste blind?

Hi John,

Yes we tasted the 4 pairs one at a time.

This was our 3 tasting and we have done 1 of them blind so far. I am thinking our next tasting in November which is a Single Quinta theme will be done as a blind tasting.

Very nice.

I wouldn't worry about the scores matching a Parker model. The important thing was the relative rankings, and you captured that.

Looks like a really fun tasting!

There are some oddities in the results, though. I'm wondering if the spreadsheet has an error or two in it?

For one, the Burmester 10 received more points than the Colheita 2005, 1047 to 1044, though the Colheita 2005 was declared the winner. That made me look at the individual scores, and I noticed that tasters 15 and 16 each scored the 10-yr old higher, but picked the Colheita 2005 as their favorite of the pair. Is that correct?

Glenn E. wrote:For one, the Burmester 10 received more points than the Colheita 2005, 1047 to 1044, though the Colheita 2005 was declared the winner.

It appears the winner was based on the number of people that picked it, not the sum of the scores. Note that a few people picked winners, but didn't score.

Eric Menchen wrote: Note that a few people picked winners, but didn't score.

From where I'm sitting I think the winners were the participants.

Eric Menchen wrote:

Glenn E. wrote:For one, the Burmester 10 received more points than the Colheita 2005, 1047 to 1044, though the Colheita 2005 was declared the winner.

It appears the winner was based on the number of people that picked it, not the sum of the scores. Note that a few people picked winners, but didn't score.

Hi Glenn,

We asked people to score each wine on the Parker scale. But then what we did was after we had tasted all the wines, we had an around the table session.

Each person told their grades for each wine, but they were also asked which wine in each pair won that particular battle. There were a few that did not score their wines on the point scale but did offer their opinion about each battle and 1 or 2 times a person chose a wine that wasnt the higher scoring one. That is how the Burmester 2005 won over the 10YO with a lower point score. For me the most important thing wasn't the points given but more the individual battles for this tasting. Also bare in mind most people in the club are new at giving points and making rankings or even putting words to what they are tasting.

Edward J wrote:

Eric Menchen wrote: Note that a few people picked winners, but didn't score.

From where I'm sitting I think the winners were the participants.

I agree. I must admit that Martin & I were pretty happy with the setup for the tasting and all the participants when home with a smile on their lips. Good wines and great company. Doesn't get much better than that. The only thing that bugs me is that we couldn't fit in the 1976 Krohn. Well on some other occasion I want to test it up against the 87'. I think it will be a close battle.

I still have a small amount of the 1987 Krohn that I am going to save for the weekend.

Thomas V wrote:Each person told their grades for each wine, but they were also asked which wine in each pair won that particular battle. There were a few that did not score their wines on the point scale but did offer their opinion about each battle and 1 or 2 times a person chose a wine that wasnt the higher scoring one. That is how the Burmester 2005 won over the 10YO with a lower point score. For me the most important thing wasn't the points given but more the individual battles for this tasting. Also bare in mind most people in the club are new at giving points and making rankings or even putting words to what they are tasting.

That makes sense. Thanks for the explanation!

And yes, I agree with Edward - the participants were the real winners here!

Edward J wrote:

Eric Menchen wrote: Note that a few people picked winners, but didn't score.

From where I'm sitting I think the winners were the participants.

A very big +1. Great job with the tasting and write up