For The Love Of Port

Tasted at the Help for 2 Brits on Tour! tasting
4/30/2010

1970 Taylor Fladgate Vintage Port

Color: Medium red with some bricking.
Nose: Strawberry, some trademark Taylor spice, and very light alcohol. After a couple of hours in the glass, prominent cinnamon.
Palate: A bit of heat, spicy, and zingy raspberry. Medium full body and neither sweet nor dry. Decent tannins and acidity. Cinnamon late in the mouth.
Finish: A bit harsh to start, but good length. With time in glass, the finish mellowed significantly.

When we first started I gave this a preliminary score of 92 and made a note to check it again later. Wow, what a difference! Given another 2 hours in the glass the Taylor really blossomed into a spectacular Port. The heat integrated, the little bit of harshness disappeared, and the finish mellowed and lengthened. By the end of the night we were all very sad that the bottle was empty.

96 points.

92 --> 96 just two hours later? Weren't you the guy saying 3-5 points for Suckling going from a cask sample to a finished bottle 9 months later was way too much?

Just kidding around. Someone has to give you a hard time once in awhile.

Hey, I'm an amateur who has only been drinking Port for 5 years, I'm allowed a little slack!

Doesn't that just show how big of a difference a proper decant can make, though? I can just imagine the TNs we might have written if that bottle had been pop-n-pour... compared to the end of the evening once it was truly ready to drink in all its full glory.

I have one more T70 in my cellar, and it's going to get 8-10 hours for sure!

How many hundreds of times I have posted on a half dozen wine forums about extended decanting, then wrote an article on that 4+ years ago that has been viewed about 10,000x. Still I read TNs here and elsewhere, all the time ... where it is clear (at least to me ) that a poor showing of a specific Port probably had more to do with the improperly decanted bottle, time wise ... rather than any other possible factor. If I was to publicly admit to how many emails per week are asking me about how long to decant Port bottles ... you'd all have me committed.

Unfortunately, my wife and daughter know the real truth about my emails re: decanting , and have chosen to continue living with me anyway.