For The Love Of Port

Part of an eighties themed VP tasting in Aarhus Port Club with 10 VP's which were served semiblind.

Decanted for 6 hours

Looks the age in the glass. Nice taste of strawberries and baked rhubarb. A little douro bake? Mild, clean, mature, elegant and is primed for drinking right now. I enjoyed it very much and I was surprised over how well this was showing.

This won wine of the night over all for the 15 participants.

93 points

A fine VP that I've only had three times in my life, including one last year. I've always been around the 92 point range for it, but as much as I enjoy this VP, the 1987 Niepoort Colheita is every bit its equal.

Nice note but why surprised?

I've had this a couple times, one spoiled with VA and one that was marvelous. Glad this showed well for you, it can be a tasty bottle for sure.

Roy Hersh wrote:A fine VP that I've only had three times in my life, including one last year. I've always been around the 92 point range for it, but as much as I enjoy this VP, the 1987 Niepoort Colheita is every bit its equal.

Nice note but why surprised?

I was surprised that I found this better than the Ramos Pinto and Graham's 1983 on the night. Only bested by Graham's 1985, Fonseca 1985 and Smith Woodhouse 1985. It really is drinking very well right now for my preference.

Thomas V wrote:

Roy Hersh wrote:A fine VP that I've only had three times in my life, including one last year. I've always been around the 92 point range for it, but as much as I enjoy this VP, the 1987 Niepoort Colheita is every bit its equal.

Nice note but why surprised?

I was surprised that I found this better than the Ramos Pinto and Graham's 1983 on the night. Only bested by Graham's 1985, Fonseca 1985 and Smith Woodhouse 1985. It really is drinking very well right now for my preference.

1987 was a very good vintage and by all accounts probably should have been a declared vintage. However, this was still the time when it was believed that one could only declare up to 3 times per decade and I'm sure that came into play. Being 1980, 1983, and 1985 were classic declarations already.

And by 1987 the issues with bad corks was being reduced so there isn't TCA, oxidation, and other issues that were more rampant in the early 80's and have led to a lot of bottle variations in those VP's. So 1987's tend to show far better consistently than other 1980 VP's.

And one can't talk about this time period without mentioning Niepoort's issues. After 1985 and before 2000 their VP's suffer from lots of VA issues. Sometimes it doesn't show and you get a great bottle and sometimes it's really bad and undrinkable, or somewhere in the middle. 1997 is the most notorious, probably as there is a lot available still in the markets and it tends to get consumed a lot more than their VP's from earlier.