1947 Quinta do Noval Nacional

[Alex Bridgeman]

Believed to be Nacional and believed to be from 1947 (confirmed later from the cork); little is known of the provenance. A very pale, golden colour, like that of a 10 year old Sauterne. Amber, thin and watery looking, green hint at the rim. Weak on the nose, hints of brown sugar. Sweet and delicate in the mouth, flowery impact with icing sugar dust coming through in the mid-palate. But the aftertaste is just astonishing - where did it come from in a wine that was so delicate. This aftertaste was warm, comforting and went through an amazing range of flavours. This is a wine very much at its tawny stage of life. There was some dispute as to whether this was a Nacional, with most people dismissing the possibility due to the lack of body. Some even speculated that this was a 20 or 40 year old tawny that had been bottled a few years ago. My personal opinion is that this is a Nacional. This is based on (i) the length and unexpectedness of the aftertaste and (ii) the similarities of this wine with the 1964 Nacional that was heading in the same sort of direction and with a further 17 years of bottle age I could well imagine the '64 could end up showing like this bottle. I also felt that (iii) the characteristics of the wine showed a reductive bottle aging development rather than the more overt development that you find in a tawny - my (limited) experience with old tawnies is that they tend not to be as delicate and flowery as an elderly bottle aged wine. This is just about in the top quartile of wines that I expect to drink this year and is not likely to change significantly from where it is today over a further 10 years so I score it as 7/7 on Tom's scale or 90/100.