For The Love Of Port

First of four bottles, this one from Wine Bid. The bottle looked less than perfect and the fill was bottom neck. It was a prime candidate for our birthdays/35th anniversary weekend.

7 hour decant, and I think 9 might have been better. Cork was in decent shape with lots of sediment. Very dark right out of the bottle. The nose was a bit closed, but I picked up tobacco, anise perhaps? Complexity was fine, typical Fonseca profile, rich, sweet, and elegant. I picked up an Orange Dreamsicle on top of a graham cracker. The finish was long and hot. It seemed a bit detached and prevented a better score. This is a powerhouse of a wine. This bottle was enjoyable and very good, but I suspect not the best example of this. 91+ points

How crazy that a 46 year old bottle of Port is too much when "only" decanted for 7 hours and would be likely better at 9?

But this is actually one of the top two Ports of the vintage, alongside the Nacional AND, imho, one of the finest VPs to be produced in the past half century. Sorry your first of four examples was not up to its typical greatness; that heat you experienced is usually not part of the profile I experience.

This is the problem you encounter having to acquire your wines of sometimes questionable provenance. Looking back it was a gamble to buy that particular lot, but the price was right. So you pays your money and take your chances. No regrets.

Edward J wrote:This is the problem you encounter having to acquire your wines of sometimes questionable provenance. Looking back it was a gamble to buy that particular lot, but the price was right. So you pays your money and take your chances. No regrets.

The hard part of buying any old wine, Port or otherwise, is what happened to it during all those decades. Back then there wasn't much active cooled shipping going on and certainly not for wine, not a lot of air conditioning, and a lot of passive cellars that warmed up in the summer.

Roy Hersh wrote:How crazy that a 46 year old bottle of Port is too much when "only" decanted for 7 hours and would be likely better at 9?

But this is actually one of the top two Ports of the vintage, alongside the Nacional AND, imho, one of the finest VPs to be produced in the past half century.

I haven't had '70 Nacional, but Niepoort & Dow are also stunners for 2nd place tie.

Roy, do you think '85 Fonseca will surpass '70 in the long run? '85 is so dark and young, I can't imagine it ever being over the hill in our lifetime.