NV Cockburn's Special Reserve Port

[Richard Henderson]

Another winter NV. Dark ruby, almost purple rim. Excellent baked sugar cookie and blackberry nose. A little hot even when a few days went by but I liked it. Very smooth on entry, coats the palate . A nice finish. This is a really good port. I think some would guess it a vintage port.

[Roy Hersh]

Richard,

I am sure you won't be surprised by my next sentence. This is the #1 Port (of all types) sold in the world and the next closest, Fonseca's Bin 27 is about only half the volume of this one.

The launch of this Port in the UK, is the reason that Cockburn's failed to declare 1977. After numerous failed attempts to get this launched in the UK, the Managing Director and others on his team, chose to "declassify" lots of the 1977 juice to go into this wine to bolster its quality when presenting it across the UK. I don't know if they regret their decision or not (depends on who in the company you speak to) ... however, the project was successful in that "Special Reserve" was launched based on that effort and the UK buys and sells a TON of this Port.

Don't quote me, as my memory is modest at best ... but if I am on target, this moves in the neighbordhood of 2.5 million cases a year worldwide!

[Richard Henderson]

These are the kinds of factoids that you would know. I can say it was way under $20 and it was great! As you and Andy encouraged me to post on the NV's I have tried during this winter of my surgery recovery, I am learning a lot and there are some really great buys out there. It would be maybe an unfair challenge but what if we submit some of these NV's with well known blockbuster vintage ports blind and see what happens. :) :twisted:

[Roy Hersh]

I am the very first to get in line to admit that when it comes to blind guessing games, I am terrible. Then again, I've never seen anybody who is really good at them, including certified Masters of Wine and Master Sommeliers, no less winemakers.

So that exercise would not be that insightful, at least for me. What would be VERY insightful, would be to do a full lineup of say the top dozen names of Ruby Reserves ... and put them in a random blind lineup ... then carefully evaluating them by sensory perception alone. That would be a fantastic and educational process, in my opinion.

[Andy Velebil]

i see the future makings of a fun little tasting.

[Richard Henderson]

Roy.
I have seen some folks who are very good at blind tastings. Even those folks are wrong 75% of the time. What I think is that we are influenced in our minds by labels and what we expect. If we are tasting a 70 Fonseca and we know it, our minds reenforce the greatness of that wine. But the simple pleasure of an NV port seems difficult to grasp. We are human but we seem to expect great things from a label. That is why the "experts" are so often fooled when tasting blind. I don't fear it but I think it is humbling and educational if we don't take ourselves too seriously.