For The Love Of Port

Tasted blind at Roy's house, June 22-25, 2009. Preliminary report here.

Bottle #1: 2007 Smith Woodhouse Vintage Port (Cask Sample)
Bottle #2: 2007 Sandeman Vintage Port (Cask Sample)
Bottle #3: 2007 Niepoort Pisca Vintage Port (Cask Sample)
Bottle #4: 2007 Gould Campbell Vintage Port (Cask Sample)

2007 Sandeman Vintage Port (Cask Sample)

Day 1
Color: inky with a ruby-purple tone. 2/16" fade at the rim, making it the most opaque of the group.
Nose: paper/dust/charcoal that's somewhat difficult to identify, a faint minty note, and an impression of tart red fruit
Palate: zowie... this is a tannic beast. The tannins are almost powdery, as if you're drinking a cup of talcum powder. The fruits (that survive the tannins) are red and raw, zesty and tart. There's also some heat.
Finish: tannins and heat are about the only things that survive

Initial rating: 85-88. The tannins are insane so the entire Port seems out of balance.

Day 2
Color: very slightly more fade, but still pretty obviously less than the other three bottles.
Nose: alcohol, dusty paper, a faint sour note, and some tart raspberries. The sour note and the raspberries go hand-in-hand.
Palate: an initial sweetness followed by heat, big grippy tannins, and a pepper-ish note. (a la black pepper, not jalapeno pepper.)
Finish: tannins, dry fruit, and oddly no stem or skin impression. I say oddly, because my experience is that stem/skin is something a Vintage Port will pick up with air time, not something it will lose.

New rating: 88-91. It's significantly better, but still doesn't feel like an epic Port. I toyed with giving it 89-92, but ultimately decided that even though it was significantly improved over Day 1, it still just wasn't quite up to the level of the other three bottles.

Day 3
I didn't taste on Day 3, but thought I should include it here for continuity.

Day 4 - my initial report referred to this as Day 3
Color: less fade than Day 2, putting it back to where it was on Day 1. This bottle is clearly more opaque than the other three.
Nose: dusty cardboard (not corked!) or possibly minerals, tart purple fruits, and what feels like good heat.
Palate: huge, massive tannins. A little bit of dust or minerals. The fruits are a bit reserved, or possibly just being dominated by the tannins. The heat is mild and feels nice.
Finish: tannins and a bit of a soft bite. The finish feels weak, but it lingers forever.

Final comments: I had a very difficult time evaluating this bottle because - to me - the tannins were so far out of balance. Roy said that this bottle would have seemed perfectly normal in a lineup of 2003 cask samples because they were ALL brutal. I just couldn't get past them, though, and so didn't change my score much. Final score: 90-93 points.

Reveal: 2007 Sandeman Vintage Port (Cask Sample). Roy smiled when the bottle was revealed - I think he may have suspected this bottle was the Sandeman. His score was significantly higher than mine, and when he explained it I could see where he was coming from. But as noted, I have problems evaluating the tannins and they're really powerful in this Port.

There were a handful of VPs that stood out to me in Portugal for several reasons. There were only a few like this and yes, I mentioned earlier during the tastings that I felt this could possibly be the Sandeman.

I can certainly understand Glenn's issue as being new to cask samples and this style shows what an enormously concentrated VP which possesses massive tannins to boot, can do to an unsuspecting palate, especially coming directly after the softest wine in the flight. So in stark contrast and not segregated and evaluated in its own right, it would be very tough for most to make heads or tails of this VP until it has had more air time. By day 4 it was singing a very lovely song and was not the beast of burden from the first two days, whereas I did taste it on day 3 and at that point it was already soft-er than the first two days were the tannins were punishing.