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The Horizontal of 1970s, definite article, was held over two days and five flights, Thursday 2^nd and Friday 3^rd October 2025, at the Boot & Flogger, as organised by Mike who was assisted by Julian.

Links:

• Review of the event as a whole;
• Bottle pictures;
• Planning, flight 0, Thu 2^nd Oct 2025;
• Planning, flights 1–4, Fri 3^rd Oct 2025;
• Placemats;
• Flight 0 (Thu 2^nd Oct 2025):
  • Andresen;
  • Hutcheson;
  • Martins (Hutcheson);
  • Dalva (C. da Silva);
  • Dalva;
  • Borges;
  • Barros;
  • Cabral;
  • Diez Hermanos;
  • Feist;
  • Osborne;
  • Santos Júnior;
  • Dolamore;
  • Hunt Roope (Tuke Holdsworth);
  • Maia;
  • Pousada;
  • Thienpoint (Butler Nephew);
  • Mackenzie;
  • Messias Quinta do Cachão;
  • Royal Oporto Quinta das Carvalhas;
  • Graham tregnum; 
• Flight 1 (Fri 3^rd Oct 2025):
  • Quarles Harris;
  • Gould Campbell;
  • Gould Campbell LBV;
  • BBR;
  • Warre;
  • Dow;
  • Graham;
  • Smith Woodhouse;
  • Noval;
  • Noval Nacional;
• Flight 2 (Fri 3^rd Oct 2025):
  • Taylor Vargellas;
  • Taylor;
  • Fonseca;
  • Croft Quinta da Roêda;
  • Croft;
  • Avery;
  • Ferreira;
  • Sandeman;
  • Offley Boa Vista;
• Flight 3 (Fri 3^rd Oct 2025):
  • Martinez;
  • Cockburn;
  • Kopke São Luiz;
  • Rebello Valente;
  • Cálem;
  • Cálem Quinta da Foz;
  • Burmester;
  • Niepoort;
  • Sibio;
• Flight 4 (Fri 3^rd Oct 2025):
  • Ramos Pinto;
  • Delaforce;
  • Gonzalez Byass;
  • Poças;
  • Krohn;
  • Morgan Brothers;
  • Butler Nephew;
  • Royal Oporto;
  • Feuerheerd;

(Colour in the image — which is not in the PDF nor in the printout — distinguishes flights: white grey green pink cyan.)

I've made some post-event notes over on the planning & arrangements thread.

Thank you to everyone - a fabulously fun day, and one which will hopefully linger in the memory.

Deepest thanks to the many people who greatly assisted both in advance and on the day:
- Julian, who devoted many days of efforts to prepare bottles, decanters, labels, placemats, take photos, and more
- the decanting crew: Neil, Justin, Martin, Tony, Julian again
- the pouring crew: Alex, Harry, Charles, Phil, Ian, Ben, Tony again, Michael
- Martin again: the bottle gallery arranger

BIg thanks to Cliff for multiple super-generous additions of bottles: 1970 Graham's tregnum, 1970 Gruaud-Laroze magnum, 1970 Latour Double Mag(!), 1970 Léoville-Las Cases Mag, 1970 Brane-Cantenac Mag, plus, plus...! And to Justin for his added bottle(s), and to Wolfgang G for the riesling pair, and I've likely forgotten some too...it was a long couple of days!

Scoring for Flight 0 below. A quick note on the scoring system. Votes can be given in half point increments up to a maximum of three points for any wine. Each taster has up to a maxiumum of six points to allocate across wines.

Scoring - Flight 1

Scoring - Flight 2

Scoring - Flight 3

Scoring - Flight 4





Flight 4 happened around 8pm. Conversation in the room suggested that those seated along the "wall" side of the table (and hence all tasting from one of the bottles), were less fortunate with the quality of port in the glass, compared to those seated on the "window" side of the table (together tasting from the other bottle).

Scoring - Whole Event




Final scoresheet. Headlines:

• nothing from Flight 0 scored in the Port of the Whole Event
• 17 ports out of 57 got points
• the top 3 port racked up exactly two thirds of the available points, top 7 took >91% of available points

Before

Ages ago my first Port, the first one I tasted, was Taylor 1970. The 1970 Vintage is the Vintage of my era.

And in the 1970 horizontal in January 2009 the great shippers were great, the medium shippers were great, mostly the weak shippers were great, and only Hutcheson was a whoopsie. That was then. It was younger; we were younger; I was … move along, nothing to see here.


This

So, to the Ports as of 2025. And the 1970s have moved decisively past active middle age. The whole-vintage summary TN might be red-brown 40% opaque, early-palate dry moving to drier for mid- and late-palate, mid-weight, fruit gone or a hint of cherries, decent length.

Flight 0, on Thursday, had many for which the description ‘mediocre’ would be unfairly flattering. My favourite two were the BOB Thienpoint (Butler Nephew) and Dolamore, though the consensus was that the former was first. (Well, the real winner was the Graham tregnum, but that was somehow deemed separate.)

Without doubt the senior flight was flight 1, within which much to love. (Alas, I somehow lost my TN sheets for this flight. [Edit: found!]) For me Dow the clear winner, then Quarles Harris, then Smith Woodhouse, but the competition for third included both the GCs (V.P., LBV) and Warre. The Graham was good but not of the same rank; the window side’s BBR was corked. Neither Noval nor Noval Nacional competed.

Flight 2 had merit. Taylor definitely senior to the Vargellas, Fonseca and Avery showed very well, Croft also good.

Flight 3 (Niepoort no-show), led by Kopke São Luiz, followed by nothing else. Flight 4 was a wash-out.


Conclusion

This vintage has moved from almost-everything-excellent to most-seem-tired-but-a-few-gems-remain. Any resemblance to people born in the sixties and seventies is purely coincidental.


Thanks

This was a monster to organise. Mike was a fool for doing it, and I thank him for this folly. Over a hundred bottles to chase, 2½ dozen people to herd, and yet he made it work. Thank you.

Seating plans, in case anyone wants to split scoring by bottle.

1970 Château Léoville Las Cases, from large-format, brought by Cliff. Great dark colour; nose of violets and dark cherries; palate drier than nose, big and long, intensely dry, and I concluded “Singing”. It sang! Later, it weakened.

And with that, I have posted all my TNs from this event. Please, others, do likewise — except that you should write better TNs than mine.

An incredible event! I wish I could have been there.

Could someone explain the color-coded dots on the scoresheets? At first it seems that red indicates someone who did not taste that flight, but then I see that there are a few scores recorded under red dots, albeit not a full set of scores.

Some notes on how this was organised.

Flight 0, on Thursday 2^nd October 2025, as one bottle of each, and small pours — about 35ml each.

Flight 1–4 were on Friday 3^rd October 2025, from lunch until late. There were two bottles of each. The original bottles were given decanter labels

Flight 1: ‘blue’ = window side; ‘yellow’ = wall side.

Flight 2: ‘pink’ = window side; ‘green’ = wall side.

Flight 3: ‘green’ = window side; ‘pink’ = wall side.

Flight 4: ‘blue’ and ‘yellow’; but I failed to note which way round, when somebody posts will edit this line.

See pictures in posts starting at 139879. I judged bottles. The best (of three, or better of two) were in the column on the left, the middle in the middle, and the spare (where possible) on the right. for some shippers, there were identical bottles, or seemingly identical because so opaque, for which ordering was de facto random.

On decanting, the label was transferred t the clean screw-cap bottle = decanter. At the venue colours were assigned by Mike to a side of the table, by reasoning unknown to me. So each side should have received an ex ante even mix of better and middle bottles.

Thank you to Mike and to Julian for the many many hours of work that went into this. The most comprehensive tasting ever, surely, of 1970 VP and the most comprehensive tasting of 1970 VP ever, surely, that there will ever be.

winesecretary wrote: ↑21:53 Mon 06 Oct 2025 Thank you to Mike and to Julian for the many many hours of work that went into this. The most comprehensive tasting ever, surely, of 1970 VP and the most comprehensive tasting of 1970 VP ever, surely, that there will ever be.

It will soon be 2030...

Glenn E. wrote: ↑19:35 Mon 06 Oct 2025 An incredible event! I wish I could have been there.

Could someone explain the color-coded dots on the scoresheets? At first it seems that red indicates someone who did not taste that flight, but then I see that there are a few scores recorded under red dots, albeit not a full set of scores.

Yes red dot used to indicate in real time who has not allocated six points yet. It's not a deal-breaker though - for example in one of the flights, Phil didn't want to allocate a full six points as he didn't think the ports merited getting the points. And then also, some people only attended some of the flights and so they may show as red, having not scored the flight.

See here for the scoresheets.

I've just updated my placeholder post at the top of the thread. Copied here:

I've made some post-event notes over on the planning & arrangements thread.

Thank you to everyone - a fabulously fun day, and one which will hopefully linger in the memory.

Deepest thanks to the many people who greatly assisted both in advance and on the day:
- Julian, who devoted many days of efforts to prepare bottles, decanters, labels, placemats, take photos, and more
- the decanting crew: Neil, Justin, Martin, Tony, Julian again
- the pouring crew: Alex, Harry, Charles, Phil, Ian, Ben, Tony again, Michael
- Martin again: the bottle gallery arranger

BIg thanks to Cliff for multiple super-generous additions of bottles: 1970 Graham's tregnum, 1970 Gruaud-Laroze magnum, 1970 Latour Double Mag(!), 1970 Léoville-Las Cases Mag, 1970 Brane-Cantenac Mag, plus, plus...! And to Justin for his added bottle(s), and to Wolfgang G for the riesling pair, and I've likely forgotten some too...it was a long couple of days!