1985 Quinta do Noval Vintage Port

[Glenn E.]

From day 2 of the 1985 horizontal, 24-25 Jan 2015, Holiday Inn Issaquah. All Ports were tasted blind. Unless otherwise noted, Ports were decanted for ~4 hours the morning of the tasting. The ones that I decanted received ~8 hours of decant overnight and were then stoppered for another ~6 hours until the tasting.

1985 Quinta do Noval Vintage Port
This is one of the bottles that I decanted on Saturday night.

Color: Medium tawny... something like a 10 Year Old might look like.

Nose: Caramel, cream cheese, steel cut oats.

Palate: Tart, fruity, very pleasant. A nicely drinking Port right now, but probably at its peak. Nice strawberries and red raspberries.

Score: 89 points. Very good - a great Port to have as a daily drinker. Easy, yet not simple. As often happens for me, Noval beats out Nacional blind.

[Roy Hersh]

You liked this a bit more than I did. I have never found the 1985 Noval to be anything better than average ... and that goes back to the early 1990's when it was still young. Even at less than a decade of age, this showed some early maturing fruit, was never bright ruby in color but a tint towards aubergine and bricking at that. In more recent years, it has seemed to have remained on a plateau, never improved and at best received from me a rating in line with its year.