For The Love Of Port

Port D - 17½ hours double decant time
Orange centre, deeply evolved colour, distinct orange rim - a wine which looks elderly. A nose of quince, honey, a touch of burnt rubber and some eucalyptus notes. In the mouth the initial impact is sweet but balanced with an acidic structure. Lots of tertiary caramel and burnt sugar flavours, a nice "brown sugar" complexity and an occasional bitterness like is found in walnut skins. The aftertaste is very quiet, lingers a while but then goes sooner than I would have hoped. A little above the average for drinking today and a port that I would anticipate will decline with grace over the next 10 years. 6/5 or 90/100.

Port D - Grahams 1948; sold to me as a Croft 1945 but with no label on the bottle. The seal had all but fallen off the bottle and all I could make out from the seal was the letters INT across the middle. When the cork was pulled, it came out in one piece and was very clearly branded Grahams 1948. A bit of a surprise but one I decided I could cope with.

This tasting note is one of several related tasting notes. Click [here] to see the original note in context.

As a young tax lawyer in London in 1977 we had a Graham 1948 vintage port at the end of a business lunch, and it was fabulous, and that bottle led to my interest in vintage port. Initially I emphasized Grahams in the 1980s based on that lunch, but since the 1992 vintage I have been more into Taylor and Fonseca. In 1994-due to the quality of the vintage-I laid in a wide spectrum of vintage ports, including the accustomed names, but also wines like Ramos Pinto and Tuke Holdsworth (which I had not myself seen since 1955).

I've had it once and it was epic like most old Grahams are. Every '48 I have had has been excellent.

I did a double take I was so shocked to see Al B.'s name with a TN here. Then I looked at the date.

Oh well. He was the one who actually first said that if we ever built a searchable TN database, he'd post here. I don't expect that to happen at this point though.

hi all sheila and myself had this twice last year we decantered for 1to 2 hours and found it unballenced and slightly bitter levels top sholder very
we prefered the g85
symonb
ps i think we gave it 90pt

Roy Hersh wrote:I did a double take I was so shocked to see Al B.'s name with a TN here. Then I looked at the date.

Oh well. He was the one who actually first said that if we ever built a searchable TN database, he'd post here. I don't expect that to happen at this point though.

Roy,

It'll happen, I'm just dead busy at work and find the volume of traffic on FTLOP more than I can keep up with most of the time. But take a look and you'll see a surprise that I've left for you today...

Alex

Al B. wrote:

Roy Hersh wrote:I did a double take I was so shocked to see Al B.'s name with a TN here. Then I looked at the date.

Oh well. He was the one who actually first said that if we ever built a searchable TN database, he'd post here. I don't expect that to happen at this point though.

Roy,

It'll happen, I'm just dead busy at work and find the volume of traffic on FTLOP more than I can keep up with most of the time. But take a look and you'll see a surprise that I've left for you today...

Alex

Many thanks Alex