Vintage Port Notes November 2016

Vintage Port at the Manchester Tennis and Racquets Club

The Victorian club dining room at the MTRC is the setting for an annual tasting of vintage Ports with wines from the club stock as well as from member’s own cellars. After some outstanding wines at previous dinners, this year’s selection proved to be rather a mixed bag with two promising wines turning out to be rather a disappointment. However there were two wines that I had never tasted before which out-performed their more illustrious peers. The following wines are presented in the order that they were tasted:   

Fonseca 1977 ****/*****

A Visit to Sandeman

Due to the re-construction of my new website followed by a major outage of our internet (thank you so much BT) I am rather behind at following up with some of the wines that I have tasted over the summer. In June 2016, over São João in Oporto and the EU Referendum in the UK, I visited Sogrape, Portugal’s largest wine producers. Sogrape own both Sandeman and Ferreira (we stayed in the Douro at Quinta do Porto) two shippers known for their remarkable tawnies as well as some fine vintage Ports. We tasted and drank plenty of both:

Two Outstanding Fladgate Ports

I had lunch in London with David Guimaraens this week. David is the winemaker for the Fladgate Partnership which embraces Taylor, Fonseca, Croft and Krohn. The meal (substantial Spanish tapas) was accompanied by Port, all the way through. We began with two white Ports, Fonseca's Sirocco and Taylor's Chip Dry, the Fonseca being the richer, drier and more serious of the two (if 'serious' is a word you can use for white Port). These were followed by Fonseca 2011 Unfiltered  LBV (closed, tight knit and restrained) and Taylor 2011 LBV (richer, oppulent, sweeter and more immediately appealing).

Graham's 1983 at The Saintsbury Club

Graham's 1983 was served at the Saintsbury Club Dinner in the Vintner's Hall on 18th October 2016. This is one of the best wines of the vintage, a year over-shadowed by 1985 until the latter threw up one or two rather nasty surprises. Still deep and relatively youthful in colour (although the 83's were never the deepest of wines); still quite tight knit on the nose, mid-weight with gentle and rather lovely cherry fruit and the firm tannins that were the hallmark of the vintage.