Browse Tag

port

Kitaen

Quinta do Infantado Tawny Porto (Douro) – Caramel, brown sugar, baked plum. Silky and only a little bit hot. Simple, but nice. (5/10)

Cracker

[vineyard]Graham’s 1996 Porto Malvedos (Douro) – Still sticky-fruited and jellified, all blue/purple/black berry syrup and slippery sweetness. What structure there is has been forcefully relegated to the background. Easy-drinking, and as it airs some hints of a graphite-textured tannin finally emerge from some remote refuge. Needs more time, but on the other hand quite drinkable now. (12/09)

Dow before me

Dow’s 1990 Porto Quinta do Bomfim (Douro) – Red cherry, black pepper, and spice…sweet, rich, and full-bodied, but balanced. I think. There’s a minor bit of developmental appeal now, but I’d let this one hang around a fair while longer. (12/09)

Stinky infant

Quinta do Infantado Tawny Porto Medium-Dry (Douro) – After much dalliance upon the occasion of this producer’s first appearance on U.S. shores, I gave up ever buying their wines, due to the vast majority of them (approaching 90%) being corked…but only mine. Everyone else seemed to be able to enjoy the wine in untainted form. I can certainly claim no evidence of systemic taint, and in fact it seemed to be very much a personal vendetta the TCA gods were waging against me (and, unfortunately, against the producer’s wines when they were so unlucky as to be carried home by me, or opened by someone else in my house), but trying to find an intact bottle was just hopeless. So after a hiatus of a few years, I decided to dip my toe in these stanky waters once more. The result? What else? Corked. Corked into oblivion. Obviously, I am not meant to own or drink these wines. (9/09)

Let me stress, per the comments below: this is, as far as I can tell, my issue and my issue only. I am personally cursed by being virtually unable to experience a non-corked Infantado. My results should not — and in fact, have not — been replicated by others.

Words, words, words

[vineyard]Overgaauw 1997 Cape Vintage South African Liqueur Wine (Stellenbosch) – I admire the attempt to avoid using the word “port,” but this seems a little convoluted. The wine, however, is anything but difficult. A burst – nay, a fireworks display – of berries, still structured but with nicely-maturing spices (clove, nutmeg), forward and fruity. “Port” is a category in which South Africans appear to take much pride, but I have to say that after tasted around a dozen on a recent trip, I found the category – and many of the big names – pretty mediocre. Not so this, a library release to contrast with the winery’s more current vintage, and already showing a sophistication and worldliness that many of its brethren lack. No, it’s not up to the full range of complexities in a true Port, but it’s also not done maturing. (7/09)

Ferris Buller’s day off

RL Buller & Son Tawny Port (Victoria) – Smells like butter, and not the freshest kind either. Sickly-sweet, with the emphasis on sickness; in fact, there’s a hint of…well, I don’t want to gross everyone out, so never mind. If you can avoid smelling the wine, the palate is actually quite fruit-forward and enjoyable, with more red stuff than one expects from a tawny, and certainly more acid than seems likely. But that smell never really goes away, unfortunately, even over several days. (3/09)

Kitaen

KWV “Full” Tawny Port (South Africa) – Stale butterscotch, nasty old barrels, and brackish water. Insipid dreck. This is awful. (3/09)

Para dox

[vineyard]Seppelt 1939 “Para Liqueur” (South Australia) – One of the first press tastings to which I was ever invited was a Southcorp portfolio event that toured the U.S. Each represented producer was asked to bring something from their library stock. Seppelt brought two. The first was an aged sparkling shiraz, which I didn’t know was possible before that bottle. And the second was a Para Liqueur from the very late 1800s (the date is lost to memory). I still remember that wine: fig syrup, molasses, balsamic vinegar (the real stuff, not a cheap knockoff), and finish that seemed to last for hours. I mean that literally: two hours later, back at my desk, I could still taste the wine.

Thus, there’s extra meaning for me in this bottle, which is incredibly rare and an expression of remarkable generosity on the part of our hosts. It tastes of pure distilled brownness, dusty/particulate and burnished with antiquity, but still alive with remarkable intensity and persistence. There’s brown sugar, molasses, the sharp cling of balsamic something-or-other, to be sure…but also, a lively hint of honeydew melon, and a perfect note of bitterness contrapuntal to all the well-aged sugar. The finish is beyond incredibly long, it’s endless. An absurdly great wine. (3/05)

Bayly bread

Peter Bayly 2004 “Cape Vintage Port” (Calitzdorp) – Tired, roasted, and dried-out. Already. Less actively unpleasant than just…eh. (11/08)

Dogs of Warre’s

Warre’s 1994 “Late Bottled Vintage” Porto (Douro) – This is not a great Port, to be sure, but the problem I have with this wine is less its inherent quality than the fact that I’ve realized I just don’t much like ruby Port without significant age. The fruit here is big and simple-minded, there’s certainly no lack of sugar, the relatively minor tannin is foursquare, and there’s just not a whole lot more to say about the wine. (12/08)