For The Love Of Port

Just another random Wednesday night sipping...

The bottle was sealed with a metal capsule, the official seal placed over that, and then a wax capsule melted over the seal with "Quinta do Noval 1991" embossed in the wax on top. A nice presentation, and actually the wax came away much easier in this case than with some similarly sealed bottles I've opened in the past. The cork looked very clean but turned out to be fairly soft and it was only with great effort that I was almost able to extract the whole thing in one piece, but a small bit had to be pushed in. These notes are being written after about 4 1/2 hours of decant time. There may be a last glass left to analyze tomorrow, but it's not looking likely at this point.

A slightly hazy, slightly rusty, light maroon in color - looked almost pink as it was being poured into the decanter but became darker afterward. I would have guessed this a much older wine by its appearance. The nose shows mature characteristics as well - raisin, tobacco and dried cherry with a subtly oxidized personality. On the palate it's relatively light bodied with a dried fruit character and a caramel-like sweetness that is quickly overshadowed by a hot, spirity midpalate. The finish is of meduim length and lingers with some herbal and nutty hints, but the persistance of the alcohol interferes more than I would like. A decent port - perhaps a longer decant time would cool it down a bit - but doesn't seem to have a whole lot of stuffing left in it.

Drink soon for best results.

I have a few bottles of this and I have tried one which was good. I think it needs more than 4.5 hours decant time, perhaps.

Personally, and it would seem contrarily to the majority of folks here on FTLOP, I don’t usually give my ports such long decant times before sipping them. Of course, the younger and more robust the port, the longer I like to let it breathe, but aside from the really young ones, I find that 3 or 4 hours in the decanter is usually enough for me to get a good gauge of quality and character. I have experimented with tasting ports after 24 hours, 48 hours, and sometimes longer, but in almost every case I find that I enjoy them most and can assess them best somewhere in the 4 – 12 hour window of decant time. In any case, I did manage to leave myself a glass of this in the decanter last night, so I’ll follow up with my impressions tonight and see if 24 hours of airing has changed anything...

I finished this off last night after about 28 hours of decant time. Though the flavors had smoothed out a touch and the color was perhaps a shade darker, my overall impression didn’t really change. There was still prominent alcohol on the mid-palate that carried through to the finish and interfered with the otherwise pleasant flavors. Perhaps this just wasn’t a great bottle of this particular port, but I didn’t find that extended decant time changed my opinion in this case.