1963 Quinta do Noval Vintage Port

[Jay Powers]

Quinta do Noval 1963 (tasted 2007)

Plastic capsule that was as always B*%#! to remove (what's the trick to removing these darn capsules?). Underneath, a cork that was protruding ~1/4 inch and was actually glistening wet. The cork was soggy and 3/4 removed as a single piece, the rest as crumbs. The cork bits were filtered through a steel filter off of a huge amount of black grunge sediment which was cleanly left behind in the bottle.

First impressions (decanted ~90 minutes): Darkened a little after decanting, from a light rose to a translucent ruby. On the nose, huge complex aroma, violets, some fruit, alcohol, colheita. A little heat on the pallet (not nearly as much as on the nose), mellow, sweet, very mellow tannins, medium finish at the back of the mouth but not so much in the front or on the tongue.

Steady improvement over the next 2 hours (3.5 hours decanting time), gaining more fruit with the heat blowing off. Very smooth. Nice.

I'm not so sure this will last the night, so I'll venture a score now. Will this be in the top 50% of ports I will have this year? Probably yes. Ability to age more, not really...this is past it's apex (at least this bottle). I'm interested to see in the future if this was a prematurely aged bottle (wet protruding cork) or is representitive. I have a couple more bottles to check in the future. Initial score (Tom scale) 7-6.

Would I drink this again even if I had to go buy some: Yes.

Jay

[Julian D. A. Wiseman]

The thread title is 1963, the description above 1966. Please restate vintage, just to avoid ambiguity. Thanks.

Edit: 1963 then. Thanks for fixing.