For The Love Of Port

A last minute get together tonight with Alex R. coming over for a bite and some Port. He brought a very nice 1975 Kopke Colheita and I cracked a 1977 Dow's VP. I'll get the TN for the Kopke up tomorrow, but here is the Dow's...

While not "black-strap" it is still a very dark ruby "blood red" if I recall correctly what Alex called it. While the nose has some violets it is still dominated by black licorise and some eucalyptus and is still quite youthful. Lots of blueberry and mint on a dense palate fill the mouth for what seems like several minutes. A dollop of heat early on in the finish gives way to some pepper and licorise which rounds out this youthful 32 year old VP. This is still very youthful and has a long way to go before reaching maturity, yet it drinks so well right now it's hard not to open another one. But further cellaring will reward those with patience. 94+ Points
10/18/09

How long did you decant Andy? I am going to open a bottle on Saturday.

I've experienced many "bad" bottles of DOW vintage port 1977. Some og my "port-friends" has similar experience. Is this a general known problem - that a large amount of the DOW 1977 vintage port should be with errors?

Daniel R. wrote:How long did you decant Andy? I am going to open a bottle on Saturday.

Daniel,
I decanted it about 12 hours, which was just about perfect.

Henrik Lilja wrote:I've experienced many "bad" bottles of DOW vintage port 1977. Some og my "port-friends" has similar experience. Is this a general known problem - that a large amount of the DOW 1977 vintage port should be with errors?

Henrik,
Yes I have, and I know of others as well, who have had issues with this particular vintage of Dow's. Namely a high incident of bottles being corked. I don't know why that is, but when the bottle is fine it is a wonderful and youthful VP. But sadly there is a higher incident of corked bottles. Outside of that, I've not had any other problems with them (such as being oxidized, etc).

I have heard only a couple of mentions about this wine being corked more often than it should be. Andy and also David S. both have told me about this. I have been very fortunate with my bottles of this VP, all purchased a long time ago for $34 at the time. Back then, I thought it was quite expensive. Who knew?

For my palate, the 1977 Dow VP is in the top handful of Ports vinified in this fine vintage.

At that price you should have backed up the truck...but who knew DOH!!