For The Love Of Port

I picked this up pretty cheap so was worth the risk. Has anyone tried it or familiar with it?

Hmmm, Canadian importer? Looks really interesting!

I found this note on Cellar Tracker: http://www.cellartracker.com/wine.asp?iWine=249189

Being from Bairrada, would that mean the baga grape is featured in this one?

I also found this google translated page about the producer: http://translate.googleusercontent.com/ ... 71Yz8SZRTQ

I look forward to hearing about your experience, Andy.

Hi Andy,

The good thing is that nobody in Portugal continues to make this kind of wine any more, so this is unusual stuff. Carvalho, Ribeiro & Ferreira were not producers at this time, they were merchants. They would buy wines from producers (typically Dao and Bairrada, very frequently a mix of regions), blend them, and store them in huge wooden vats (no new wood) before selling. The wines were normally fermented with the engaço, very green and acidic. A wine from 1974 would have been sold probably in the early to middle 80s as they needed time to settle down. Sometimes these were huge bottlings, 100,000 bottles would not be unusual.

I cannot recall having tried this specific year, but in my experience these wines are almost always drinkable, sometimes good, very rarely excellent. There are still a lot of bottles around, so prices are low.

Enjoy!

Brian and Daniel,
Thanks for the info.

It was past it's best, but still quite tannic. I can only imagine what this was like when young. It had to be a bruiser in the tannin department. It was fun to try, but like I mentioned past its best so not sure I would get anymore based on this bottle. Unless of course it was super cheap and I get them more as an educational tasting bottle.