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On Thursday 21^st April 2016, the night before The Big Fortified Tasting, at the Boot & Flogger, we met for a double-vertical, Dow versus Graham.

Links:

• Review of the evening as a whole;
• Placemats;
• Planning and arrangements.

Decanted 07.00 this morning. Cork came out easily, and intact.



Hardly any deposit in coffee filter paper. Rinsed bottle contained a lot of sand sized soft particles.

A sip showed plummy slightly stewed fruit, alcohol not yet integrated. Hopefully will pull together by tonight.

60% opacity, deep red. Nose he candy and strawberry. Smooth entry, nice rounded mouthfeel, good fruit level, strawberries. Nice long aftertaste and great balance. Superb specimen of G85. Possibly the best bottle of this I have tasted.

Mature red, 60% opaque. Slightly harsh on the nose with lots of fruit, but not attractive. Nice texture on entry with sweet fruit and plenty of tannins but a little underwhelming. A long sweet, strawberry jam finish, sticky and a bit cloying. This is a nice port which is lacking a bit of acidity to be well balanced. 86/100.

AHB wrote:86/100.

You're normally only 3-4 points lower in score than me, not 10. Could this have been a duff bottle in some way?

Glenn E. wrote:

AHB wrote:86/100.

You're normally only 3-4 points lower in score than me, not 10. Could this have been a duff bottle in some way?

I'm sure it was a duff bottle, it was nothing like what I would expect from Graham '85.

What worried me was that Mike thought it was the best bottle he'd ever tasted. Something doesn't compute.

AHB wrote:

Glenn E. wrote:

AHB wrote:86/100.

You're normally only 3-4 points lower in score than me, not 10. Could this have been a duff bottle in some way?

I'm sure it was a duff bottle, it was nothing like what I would expect from Graham '85.

What worried me was that Mike thought it was the best bottle he'd ever tasted. Something doesn't compute.

Very odd! I wasn't alone in liking this...and it was only a whisker behind the G70 WOTN. Maybe you had a dirty glass that tainted things?

A recommendation regardless....stop using coffee filters to decant with. About the worst thing you can use IMO. Strips the port of a lot of things.


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Andy Velebil wrote:A recommendation regardless....stop using coffee filters to decant with. About the worst thing you can use IMO. Strips the port of a lot of things.

I've always used chef's muslin cloth. Like this one.

flash_uk wrote:

Andy Velebil wrote:A recommendation regardless....stop using coffee filters to decant with. About the worst thing you can use IMO. Strips the port of a lot of things.

I've always used chef's muslin cloth. Like this one.

I've found when practical, which is most of the time, is simply stand bottle up for a short bit, free hand decant most of it, then the last bit put through a filter so you get all the liquid out but not the sediment. That way 98% of what you decant has no chance of being stripped of anything. Otherwise unbleached cheese cloth (or similar) seems to work best.

Unscientific trial by some here and myself generally showed coffee filters are the worst of the three to use.

Andy Velebil wrote:I've found when practical, which is most of the time, is simply stand bottle up for a short bit, free hand decant most of it, then the last bit put through a filter so you get all the liquid out but not the sediment.

That's how I decant, too. As long as the bottle has had a day or two to stand, I can free pour all but the last ounce (often less) without any sediment. I do use a metal screen and funnel, but that's mostly so that I can see when the first tiny bits of sediment start to show up.

flash_uk wrote:

AHB wrote:

Glenn E. wrote:

AHB wrote:86/100.

You're normally only 3-4 points lower in score than me, not 10. Could this have been a duff bottle in some way?

I'm sure it was a duff bottle, it was nothing like what I would expect from Graham '85.

What worried me was that Mike thought it was the best bottle he'd ever tasted. Something doesn't compute.

Very odd! I wasn't alone in liking this...and it was only a whisker behind the G70 WOTN. Maybe you had a dirty glass that tainted things?

That was the night when I wasn't feeling well, a few days before I came down with a really rough 'flu. I suspect that my taste buds were unreliable at the time, even though I didn't think so.

G85. Dark red, 60% opaque. Full, but not ready. Large and perfectly balanced.