For The Love Of Port

A mixed auction lot included three bottles of Berry's "vintage character" - an extinct variant that Mayson, among others, was glad to see the back of.

But the bottles were pretty close to free, so this is wallet-friendly drinking.

Age is not stated, but clues on the label include the fact that it was UK bottled, and was sourced from Taylor's.

Stoppered bottle, the cap of which promptly detached itself, requiring a corkscrew to finish the job.

As no means of re-sealing, I dumped the contents into a decanter - to my surprise, there was a fair amount of sediment.

From a drinking standpoint, this is much better than I expected, with distinctive Taylor characteristics and VP intensity.

Pitching an age, I would guess that this is from a respectable year in the 15-20 year bracket - so '87 is the prime suspect.

Can anyone enlighten me further?

Tom

It sounds like it was a Vintage Character Port that was produced from the blended grapes of a good, but large harvest and was bottled unfiltered, possibly by accident. How is that for supposition?

My meagre understanding of Vintage Character port is that this is a blend of grapes, from a blend of sites across a blend of years. If it was unfiltered, it could (perhaps would) have been bottled as Crusted Port.

My guess is that it was filtered but not stabilized so has continued to mature slowly in the bottle.

Interesting!

Alex