1970 Fonseca Vintage Port

[Tom D.]

Oporto bottled. Fill into neck, slightly spongy cork. Decanted for sediment, recorked for 4 hours, consumed over 4 hours. Slightly thin but deep garnet to bright flame orange at the rim. Very forward, plenty of raspberry and licorice but little secondary interest. Unfortunately, the raw alcohol in this bottle was really overpowering. Still, this is obviously a powerful style VP with many years of development ahead, and I'll look forward to a bit better luck with the next bottle. 90 points.

[Symon B]

hi tom out of interest were was the level in the bottle and was there any sighn of seapage i think the worst i ever scored a f1970 was 92 with a seaped bottle
this is normaly a huge deep ruby garnet port of great power fruit etc
my f1970s were estate bottled and base of neck ore beter exept 3 and they were top sholder and got sold
this port is a 100 year port im pradicting but i wont be around in 60 years time
it says in the good bible in my farthers house are many mansions whished it had said IN MY FARTHERS HOUSE ARE MANEY VINEYARDS ¬!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!LOL
fingers crossed god is a portlover

[Tom D.]

Hi Symon.

Good question, I edited my TN to provide more info. This bottle actually looked quite good. Sometimes I just run into a bottle where the alcohol rubs me the wrong way, and my score for this Fonseca reflects that. The fruit was quite pure, with some depth, no horrible flaws, I just couldn't get through the wall of alcohol to find much complexity. I'll probably pull another bottle later this year.

Tom

[Roy Hersh]

Tom,

Having read your TN a couple of days ago and having had this VP (like Symon) many times, I truly believe that the "performance" of your specific bottle ... would have been greatly enhanced with a decant of a full 8 hours. I am confident that any F70 of fine provenance, will provide a great measure of drinking pleasure when properly decanted. I truly hope that the next bottle of this blows your mind, as this is one of the all-time greats.

[Symon B]

hi roy we had several botles over 2 years of f70 and graded from 92 to 98 we decantered from bottles top sholder with sighns of seapage to mainly into neck and estate bottled we only decantered for 2 to 4 heures same for the f48 we realise you were quite right to an 8 heure breather for the f 1970 which would probably have given us a slightly better score even though most were in the 96 to 98 range there are not maney old ports predicted to improve after 30 years but here is one you can get a case for same price as the 94 vintage i have never had a f70 showing to much alachol i think you were very unlucky and roy is right on timing the decanting the f70 is the port mans port it is doing everything wright without being to powerful to fruity to sweet to chocklate to pruny to anything it is the esence of the port you want to show your friends that say they dont like port you know the sort lads !!only to give them a glass of this and they say o this is lovely what is this no its a gem in the cabinet of great ports do let us know of the nexed time you try it my friend regards symonb
ps it is also becoming more and more accsepted the 1970 vintage bordeaux has been massively underated because that to is a multi year vintage for laying down it is still refusing to collaps into the nexed phase its becoming like a bugatti in its refinment and great promise as they say do your own research only my opinion symonb