For The Love Of Port

Decanted at 11:30 am on Boxing Day, 2008, for consumption at 7:30. The actual drinking started at 8:00, and the Dow's was served probably closer to 8:30 as it was 3rd in line.

1977 Dow's Vintage Port

Purple-red in color, fading as it gets to the rim. It smells sweet and mild, with various notes of red fruits. There's also some alcohol evident on the nose, though it's not too strong.

It's smooth in the mouth, but not quite velvety. Strawberry and sweet raspberry are the primary flavors, and they're backed up by a pleasant amount of heat. This is an elegant Port, but it doesn't seem "dry" to me which is supposed to be the Dow's house style.

All-in-all very nice, but it didn't "wow" me.

Dow 77 has some bottle variation. Some bottles I have had were out of the world, some just good. Even the level of sweetness seems to vary on them. Actually I fnd the same situation on the ´63 Dow too.

Glenn,

You are not going to believe this. I recreated the lineup last night for Stewart who was unable to join us on Friday. There was no doubt about this .... this bottle was actually badly corked. I am amazed that there was NO sign of this on Friday night. It amazed me and I am sure you'll be surprised when you read this.

Wow... just, wow. That really is amazing, especially since we talked about my concern that the Graham's and Warre's were corked but I just couldn't tell. This was the very next Port we tasted right after that discussion, so if it was corked at all you would expect that we would have noticed immediately. I tasted it periodically during the day, too, before heading over to your house and it seemed fine to me the entire time.

Very strange. In a way that's too bad, too, because now I still don't know what a corked bottle smells and tastes like!

I finished off the '66 last night and it had gone a little flat. Still awesome, though!

Well, you are in luck. I just checked after reading your post. There are a few ounces left and you are welcome to the bottle if you are seriously into experiencing what a TCA infected wine is like.

What blows me away is that I am normally very sensitive to TCA and noticed NONE on Friday night and this was open quite awhile by that point. However, first nosing last night and it was quite prominent. Not as horrible as some and the underlying fruit was still able to be enjoyed ... but there is no denying the taint in this bottle. It's just very strange how long it took to appear. That says alot for the fruit of the D77!

Wow, I see why this didn't "wow" Glenn. Normally this is a really good VP and your original TN just didn't have the excitement factor normally associated with this VP. But it goes to show you that its got big stuffing to keep the TCA at bay for that long. The '83 Cockburns was similar and altough a bit of bottle stink at first, there was no TCA signs until 7 hours later, and even then it wasn't noticable on the nose but you could just get a sense of it on the palate. It takes a monster wine of that age to hide that big of a flaw.