Duff Gordon 1997 LBV

[Gerwin de Graaf]

Bottled in 2002, won at auction last sunday (so not sure about provenance, and it has been in bottle for 8 years already). Bottles all look pretty good still with driven corks.

Although I've been around this forum for a while, this will be my first (or one of my first) tasting notes, so bear with me.

Colour, deep dark red, lightens a little towards the edges. The nose has lots of ripe red fruits, some darker tones. Taste is nice, what can be expected judging the nose, fruit, a little heat/alcoholic taste (nut enjoyable, not overwhelming) and some spices. Finish is on the short side, but nice enough. it showed something we call in Dutch "zondoorstoofd" (means something like basked in the sun for quite some time, one can taste the wamth of the sun in it).

This particular bottle has one of the lowest levels of the bunch (I have 12 of them) and the cork showed almost some seepage through, but it doesn't seem to have affected the wine yet, so I'm curious about how the others bottles will turn out.

I'll give it a 75/100 score.

[Roy Hersh]

Now there's a name you don't see every day and I am speaking about Duff Gordon, although Gerwin too. Thanks for the TN and hopefully your next bottle will provide greater drinking pleasure.

[Gerwin de Graaf]

Last night opened the second bottle of the lot. I will try to post my TN's on every bottle of this one here, as I open them in the (hopefully) next couple of years.

This bottle looks fine, no signs of leakage / seepage or anuthing. Level is good as well. The cork (driven) came out a bit crumbled, as I opened this one with my pulltap waitersfriend.

Colour is a nice very dark ruby red all around, and it has a fine clear glow about it. This one has a littel bit of heat on the nose, followed by hints of cherry, some spice and liquorish. On the palate it shows lots of red fruit (very ripe, jammy -is that a known term in English? - ) again cherry, black berry, a bit of pepper and again the liquorish. It displays a nice powerful port taste. The finish on this one is a little longer than it had on the first bottle, nice warm and glowing, with a touch of vanilla in the end.

I thouroughly enjoyed these first two (generous ) glasses of this bottle and I will give this one 80-82 / 100 (which I think is very good, since in my book an LBV will probably not be able to get scores over 85 (those are for the excellent VP's, Colheitas or very old Tawnies).

[Roy Hersh]

Gerwin,

Hopefully we'll see you here more often then when you open up a bottle of this Duff stuff.