This port is nicer than that one
Posted: 21:19 Sun 24 Dec 2023
It can now be reported that it is possible to find one port more enjoyable than another, even when that other has a very well-deserved much better reputation. This just in from a drinker in Sweden:
The other day we opened what may have been one of the last Ayr-bottled Corney & Barrow Fonseca 1970s, stored in Ayr from bottling until purchase in 2014 or so and then in a very good cellar in Belfast and latterly in one almost as good in Sweden. A fine port, one that would knock your socks off with its youthful élan. Perhaps it could have lasted another 50 years without suffering any great diminution. Yes, it had stories to tell of the decades through which it had gently transmuted and of the fine flavours it had developed and was still developing. In short, however, it was not quite there yet. How is it possible to be disappointed with such a great port? Possibly one of the greatest of the later 20th century. It wasn’t in a difficult phase; it was not quiet or surly or at all sullen. It beamed. But the flavours it offered, marvellous as they were, were perhaps not those that were expected.
Today we opened a Warre 84 unfiltered LBV which is by any reckoning a far simpler and ‘inferior’ wine but one that has aged a lot quicker and which is at a very nice stage, bearing very fine late flavours and, which is the point, satisfying beyond expectations.
Perhaps such peculiarities are only to be expected in this land of winter trolls and mischievous forest spirits. (Or maybe there’s another reason Warre tastes so good here, a country which hasn’t had a war(re) for hundreds of years?)
God jul, port forum friends, may you also find yourselves surprised by your bottles.
The other day we opened what may have been one of the last Ayr-bottled Corney & Barrow Fonseca 1970s, stored in Ayr from bottling until purchase in 2014 or so and then in a very good cellar in Belfast and latterly in one almost as good in Sweden. A fine port, one that would knock your socks off with its youthful élan. Perhaps it could have lasted another 50 years without suffering any great diminution. Yes, it had stories to tell of the decades through which it had gently transmuted and of the fine flavours it had developed and was still developing. In short, however, it was not quite there yet. How is it possible to be disappointed with such a great port? Possibly one of the greatest of the later 20th century. It wasn’t in a difficult phase; it was not quiet or surly or at all sullen. It beamed. But the flavours it offered, marvellous as they were, were perhaps not those that were expected.
Today we opened a Warre 84 unfiltered LBV which is by any reckoning a far simpler and ‘inferior’ wine but one that has aged a lot quicker and which is at a very nice stage, bearing very fine late flavours and, which is the point, satisfying beyond expectations.
Perhaps such peculiarities are only to be expected in this land of winter trolls and mischievous forest spirits. (Or maybe there’s another reason Warre tastes so good here, a country which hasn’t had a war(re) for hundreds of years?)
God jul, port forum friends, may you also find yourselves surprised by your bottles.