For The Love Of Port

A few weeks ago, my wife Emmy and I were invited to participate in an experiment made by Horsens Port Wine Club in Denmark. The experiment was supported by Peter Skov and he was central to accomplish the experiment.

Decanting times is an issue that is becoming more and more discussed throughout the entire wine world. My wife and I have numerous examples where there can be vast differences between short and long decanting times for both port wines and red wines.

Six bottles of 1994 Quinta do Vesuvio vintage port, all from the same Vesuvio wooden box, and then presumably bottled very close in time. They were decanted 3 hrs + 6 hrs + 12 hrs + 24 hrs + 48 hrs + 72 hrs before the tasting started. The bottles were decanted in to the same type of decanters, so the access to air was equal for all six ports.

All 12 participants around the table had sufficient time to evaluate the six alternatives. In general, the opinion was that 72 hrs were simply too long. That port started to show signs of being tired and losing the extremely well-structured picture we all have of the 1994 Vesuvio. Also, the 3 hrs alternative lost in the competition as it is way too short for this complex vintage port.

Amongst the remaining four alternatives (6 + 12 + 24 + 48 hrs) there were plenty of discussions between the 12 “judges”. At the end the winner was 24 hrs, followed by 12 hrs, then 48 hrs and on 4th place the 6 hrs.

I guess there are relatively few occasions where we port enthusiasts are decanting the vintage port more than 12 hrs. But for these six bottles of 1994 Vesuvio it seemed that the optimal is somewhere between 12 hrs and 24 hrs. When re-checking the six alternatives at the end of the two-hour event, the 6 hrs bottle had clearly improved then being 8 hrs.

If I should dare writing up a recommendation It would be to go for minimum 10 hrs and then 12-14 hrs if time permits.

That sounds like a really fun experiment! I'm glad that you were able to participate and bring your knowledge back to us here at FTLOP.

I have considered doing a similar experiment before, but it is difficult to source 6 bottles of the same wine that have been stored exactly the same for their entire lives. A 6-pack like what Vesuvio uses is a great way to do that.

What Glenn said! And I have a bunch of different six packs, but it is hard to think of opening emptying one all at once.

I guess there are relatively few occasions where we port enthusiasts are decanting the vintage port more than 12 hrs.

I've done 24 hour decants on a number of occasions, to Roy's surprise. Now I feel slightly vindicated.

Very cool tasting--agree with Eric & Glenn. Mostly I target 12 Hours unless from the early 80s or older.

Awesome tasting and educational experience.

interesting. thanks for actually opening six bottles of the same wine for this experiment!

Bert VD wrote:interesting. thanks for actually opening six bottles of the same wine for this experiment!

And 1994 Quinta do Vesuvio nonetheless. One of my favourite VPs ever.

Glenn E. wrote:That sounds like a really fun experiment! I'm glad that you were able to participate and bring your knowledge back to us here at FTLOP.

I have considered doing a similar experiment before, but it is difficult to source 6 bottles of the same wine that have been stored exactly the same for their entire lives. A 6-pack like what Vesuvio uses is a great way to do that.

I recently purchased a 12-pack of 375ml Niepoort 1997 Vintage (they came in a wood crate marked Niepoort) with the idea that we'd open one bottle each year in order to see how this vintage evolves (or devolves) over time. Although we take pretty good notes, I have concerns that drinking them a year apart will make it rather hard to compare them. (I have noticed a distinct change in my diet (like less sugar intake) can effect how a two of the same ports taste to me over time.) So, maybe this decanting experiment might be another/better use of these bottles.

Although I have not opened a lot of vintages, so far, I have found that the older ones benefit from decanting overnight. They seem to gain all the benefits that Roy talks about in his article. Additionally, we aerate our ports while decanting. It seems that the aerator not only speeds up the decanting's benefits, but the particular one I use makes it easy to tell when sediment is about to reach the decanter. (Sometimes, it even clogs up prior to the sediment making it all the way through the aerator.)

This past weekend, we opened several 2011 Vintages and LBVs and aerated/decanted all of them. These youngin's seemed to stabilize after a couple hours, but definitely tasted better the morning after. (We were opening them in the evening, sampling them (blind taste test) and then re-sampling them in the morning. All of them improved come morning.

And the two 1970 Vintages we opened certainly improved by being decanted overnight. We decanted for about two hours before the initial tasting and weren't impressed, even though one of them was one that we loved when tasting a year ago. But after another couple of hours, both had really opened up, and by breakfast the next morning, both were excellent. I'll be tasting both again tonight, so I'll be able to note what happened to them after 24 hours of decanting.

We have also found that most of the aged tawnies we drink (which is the majority of what we drinking, including a decent number of colheita's) also benefit from some air time. For the most part, we simply open the bottle and leave it de-corked over-night for the next night's drinking. We find that they tend to loose some of their less attractive sharpness, like the sharp alcohol smell and taste that many of these have when first opened. When we're holding a tasting and don't quite have the time for leaving them open overnight, we use an aerator to decant, than funnel them back into the bottle. We'll usually do that at least twice in a row, sometime three times and then we serve them from the bottle. We haven't yet experiment with side by side identical tawnies to see just how much difference it makes but everyone at our tastings agrees that this method improves all our tawnies over the initial taste immediately after opening.

Houston Porter wrote:

Glenn E. wrote:That sounds like a really fun experiment! I'm glad that you were able to participate and bring your knowledge back to us here at FTLOP.

I have considered doing a similar experiment before, but it is difficult to source 6 bottles of the same wine that have been stored exactly the same for their entire lives. A 6-pack like what Vesuvio uses is a great way to do that.

I recently purchased a 12-pack of 375ml Niepoort 1997 Vintage (they came in a wood crate marked Niepoort) with the idea that we'd open one bottle each year in order to see how this vintage evolves (or devolves) over time. Although we take pretty good notes, I have concerns that drinking them a year apart will make it rather hard to compare them. (I have noticed a distinct change in my diet (like less sugar intake) can effect how a two of the same ports taste to me over time.) So, maybe this decanting experiment might be another/better use of these bottles.

You're gonna want to search this forum regarding 1997 Niepoort VP. Most of it is riddled with VA and not very good as a result. I finally finshed my case of these 1/2 bottles, as I used them for weekday daily drinkers for myself as I couldn't bear to sell them on to someone nor serve them to others.

Andy Velebil wrote:
I recently purchased a 12-pack of 375ml Niepoort 1997 Vintage (they came in a wood crate marked Niepoort) with the idea that we'd open one bottle each year in order to see how this vintage evolves (or devolves) over time. Although we take pretty good notes, I have concerns that drinking them a year apart will make it rather hard to compare them. (I have noticed a distinct change in my diet (like less sugar intake) can effect how a two of the same ports taste to me over time.) So, maybe this decanting experiment might be another/better use of these bottles.

You're gonna want to search this forum regarding 1997 Niepoort VP. Most of it is riddled with VA and not very good as a result. I finally finshed my case of these 1/2 bottles, as I used them for weekday daily drinkers for myself as I couldn't bear to sell them on to someone nor serve them to others.[/quote]

Thanks for the heads up. So far, the first bottle was fine so we'll have to see how the rest come along.

Houston Porter wrote:Thanks for the heads up. So far, the first bottle was fine so we'll have to see how the rest come along.

I purchased a 6-pack of their 1997 and have opened... 2? Maybe 3? So far they've all been fine. As I recall one had some faint VA, but nothing that I would call "riddled".

What Andy says is true, though. Anything bottled by Niepoort in the '90s is suspect by default. They seemed to have solved the problem in time for the 2000 vintage, though. Which is good because that's a pretty spectacular VP.

Houston Porter wrote:Thanks for the heads up. So far, the first bottle was fine so we'll have to see how the rest come along.

I too had a large quantity of 1997 Niepoort 375s. Some were better than others, but on average there was VA.

I have just added a picture of the six 1994 Vesuvio vintage ports

People are always surprised that I decant a port in the morning to drink it the evening. Since the bottle is just for a few people it takes a few hours more to drink it and watch it evolve further. It usually gets better with more time. It is very rare an older opened bottle is better the nice day but it happens. A young vintage port is often better the next day.

Thanks for posting the experiment on decanting times, it is great information.