For The Love Of Port

This was from a case purchased purchased at auction from Christie's and split between myself, Glenn, and Bryan. The lot had several SOS bottles and we put in a lowball bid and won. This was the worst of my four bottles in condition, and removing the capsule showed leakage, not just past but I think some recently as well. UK bottled by Paten & Co. (Peterborough) Ltd.

Decanted just after noon and first tasted at about 6 hours. A little warmth, but nice flavors and finish. Some light fruit and faint tawny flavors. Lighter body. A very nice drink, but not spectacular. 92-93 points. Poured the remaining Port into a 375 bottle and stoppered overnight.

At 30 hours, this had really improved. Color was red-brown with orange at the edge. Aromas of dried fruit and a little spice. In the mouth, more fruit, berry and dried fruit flavors like raisin and prune, maybe hint of apricot. Warmth has subsided from the previous day. Not much tannin, some nice acid, and a really long finish. Body was heavier than the previous day, but not too thick. Wonderful, 95 points.

Finished this off on the third day. It wasn't as nice as on the second, but still a good drink.

Glad to hear it! Sounds like a long decant is warranted, or possibly even overnight. I'll keep that in mind when I open one of mine!

As you can imagine, I drink quite a bit of this VP, certainly a couple of times every year. Have gone through cases and cases in the past 20 years. This is the one I named my daughter after. It does require 8-10 hours of decant time and even longer won't hurt it. IF your bottle was sound, you probably also noticed a BIG difference in the body weight from the six hour mark until the latter tasting. It really morphs a lot. The color you mentioned Eric, sounds a tad advanced, but then again if air and wine were getting out, the air was certainly getting in too, so that would explain it. Lots of bottle variation from reports here on as there was a bunch produced in 1970 from a variety of bottling sources. Very little gets released by Taylor into the marketplace and ex-cellars bottles are worth the extra bucks, at least in my opinion. However, for a bargain price, it is certainly worth a punt w/ lesser quality as long as like your purchase, you go in with your eyes wide open.

Roy Hersh wrote:However, for a bargain price, it is certainly worth a punt w/ lesser quality as long as like your purchase, you go in with your eyes wide open.

We knew what were going into on this purchase. If all the bottles end up as this first one, I'll be o.k. with that. If the other bottles are better, which I hope they should be given their condition, I'll be happy.

Eric Menchen wrote:

Roy Hersh wrote:However, for a bargain price, it is certainly worth a punt w/ lesser quality as long as like your purchase, you go in with your eyes wide open.

We knew what were going into on this purchase. If all the bottles end up as this first one, I'll be o.k. with that. If the other bottles are better, which I hope they should be given their condition, I'll be happy.

Yeah I'm pretty pleased with your TN. If all 4 of my bottles end up like that I'll still think we got a tremendous bargain.

I think you just under-decanted it a little bit. I'm working from memory (which is more and more faulty as time goes on), but I think that I usually try to give the T70 at least 8-10 hours.