2003 Sainsbury

[jdaw1]

Sainsbury’s Taste The Difference 2003, made by Symington Family Estates. Mindful of the question Is it wrong to decant cold?, and structuring the experiment to avoid Martin C.’s concern, three bottles were prepared.

On Thursday morning the three bottles were stood up: one at room temperature (R), one at cellar temperature (C), one at fridge temperature (F). They were decanted 07:30 Friday morning, directly from prior storage: F first, to minimise pre-decant temperature change, then C, then R. One decanting the nose of C was thought maybe flawed, the other two being identical.

Tasted blind on the evening of Friday 28th July 2023.

1: Nose liked least. Also slightly hollow mid-palate. Guessed C.

2: Intense grape-pip bitterness, long, sweetness mid-palate. Favourite. Best fruit, best sweetness.

3: Slight imperfect stink on palate, then same grape-pip bitterness. Ten minutes in the glass has cleaned this excellently, a hint of citrus freshness appearing.

The favourite was 2, then 3, then 1. But all of it felt like bottle variation, rather than decanting variation. Arguably the relative hollowness of 1 suggested that it was over-decanted.

Revelation: 1 = Cellar; 2 = Room; 3 = Fridge.

I think bottle variation far exceeded decanting variation.

Doff hat to the person pouring blind (the nature of experiments being explained to her), a picture of her younger self being here.

[mcoulson]

Very entertaining & interesting

I wonder if batch numbers exist on the bottles in any way other than the license no's ... I've just found two Niepoort 2015 LBV and they were the last two bottles from one source - they were 419372 & 419311 but I've no idea what kind of indication that would give as to how close the batch was ....

I imagine Sainsbury’s will buy a massive bucket of the stuff ..... any idea what the license numbers were ?

[mcoulson]

Very entertaining & interesting

I wonder if batch numbers exist on the bottles in any way other than the license no's ... I've just found two Niepoort 2015 LBV and they were the last two bottles from one source - they were 419372 & 419311 but I've no idea what kind of indication that would give as to how close the batch was ....

I imagine Sainsbury’s will buy a massive bucket of the stuff ..... any idea what the license numbers were ?

Just checked a number of Berry Brothers 2015 LBV's that I have and the numbers are all over the place, and three '95 Vesuvio are in sequence.

It would be really hard to apply licenses out of sequence on the bottling line so perhaps product shipped in massive volume gets muddled up ....

of course I do have sequential F77's

[Andy Velebil]

Very entertaining & interesting

I wonder if batch numbers exist on the bottles in any way other than the license no's ... I've just found two Niepoort 2015 LBV and they were the last two bottles from one source - they were 419372 & 419311 but I've no idea what kind of indication that would give as to how close the batch was ....

I imagine Sainsbury’s will buy a massive bucket of the stuff ..... any idea what the license numbers were ?

Just checked a number of Berry Brothers 2015 LBV's that I have and the numbers are all over the place, and three '95 Vesuvio are in sequence.

It would be really hard to apply licenses out of sequence on the bottling line so perhaps product shipped in massive volume gets muddled up ....

of course I do have sequential F77's

I would assume a chain that big would have everything go straight to a central receiving warehouse first. Then the big pallets are broken down and sent in small quantity to each store. So, say, 10 pallets of port arrived and someone then grabbed X number of cases from the stack to send to a store.

Then it depends on the person re-stocking the shelf and how they rotate, or not, previously bottles on the shelf.

Quite easy for large volume products to get jumbled up.