For The Love Of Port

Poured straight from a dumpy bottle sealed with a short (2cm) T stopper.

Deep and opaque red, almost magenta. The colour so intense that it sticks to the sides of the glass when the wine is swirled. A nose of boysenberries, but with an earthy edge - odd but not unpleasant. Very shiraz-like on the nose. Attractive.

Initially little impact on entry, hollow for quite a long time in the mid-palate too. There is something trying to come out and after a long time the wine starts to develop some attractive floral perfumes and blueberries in the mouth. The tannins are soft but give good structure.

The aftertaste takes a while to kick in, but when it does it leaves a very, very long flavour of dark chocolate.

Its probably unfair to score this wine having tasted it straight from the bottle. I will give it a few hours and then post again.

I came back to this wine the following day and it was improved and was drinking better. However, it still retained the very odd earthy notes and the hollowness in the mid-palate. Overall I would rate this as a very good (unfiltered?) LBV. However, I think its a great shame that it is not bottled with a driven cork as I think it would be significantly better in 5-10 years time. I score this as 85/100 or 3/4.

Alex

Having lots of experience with SA port-style of wines, Landskroon makes some well balanced versions that are Graham's sweet and less complex. With a youngster of this sort, you will be far better on day 2 or 3 as it will be huge.

You may want to modify the name using a small "p" as it is not from Portugal. Sorry, but this is just a pet peeve of mine as I think you've probably read.

Actually, I am very happy to see port wannabes discussed and entered into the tn section here!

Roy Hersh wrote:You may want to modify the name using a small "p" as it is not from Portugal. Sorry, but this is just a pet peeve of mine as I think you've probably read.

Actually, I am very nhappy to see port wannabes discussed and entered into the tn section here!

Roy,

I agree that I normally would write this up as port wih a small "p", but I was trying to replicate what was on the label of the bottle and that had a capital "p".

I'm a little unclear whether you are Unhappy to see the TN here or whether you hit the "n" by mistake. If you are unhappy then please feel free to move it to the port forum, but please leave it somewhere to go with the other notes on South African ports that I have posted in the past.

Thanks,

Alex

Thrilled!

The "n" was absolutely a mistake. Like you, I have a ton of respect for the 2nd best port in the world ... which comes from SA (definitely not the USA or Australia).

Roy Hersh wrote:Thrilled!

The "n" was absolutely a mistake. Like you, I have a ton of respect for the 2nd best port in the world ... which comes from SA (definitely not the USA or Australia).

Alex,

Good pickup on the "n" and thanks Roy for clarifying. I had initially read "happy" so am glad to see that this was indeed the case.

Roy,
This post gives me additional desire to try South African port. It sounds like they make an effort to use the same varietals, production methods... It woudl b interesting to try.

Todd

A quick post to say that I have edited an update to my tasting note on the Landskroon (the first post in this thread).

Alex

Thanks Alex.

Todd, I have visited quite a few properties that do "port" and have taken part in some verticals of vintage and seen the vineyards and heard of some wild "maneuvers" to obtain Portuguese root stock from the Douro.

There are only a few domestic (American) port style of wines that are really worth drinking and most of the best comes from Missouri, whilst a couple from California are also very good ... but only a handful at best. Given another decade, So. African port should reach its zenith as the vines will have had enough time to reach their proper maturity level.

There are some stunning buys when in country. There is one excellent source of these wines in the USA too!