1980 Dow vintage port
Posted: 18:14 Thu 13 Nov 2008
My previous two encounters with this wine have been at offlines, and on both occasions it has been my wine of the night, noting on one occasion that it was 'a buxom wench of a wine, young but not immature'
Others have described it as being immature, and as I tend to be the canary when it comes to doubting the maturity of older wine, it seemed appropriate to pop a lone bottle that has been in my cellar for some time, in order to get a better take on a bottle rather than a glass.
On decanting it was an inky colour in the decanter that could have passed for a wine at first release. The dregs when sipped were fiercely tannic.
After six hours the wine had composed itself, and there was little evolution thereafter.
Did it blow my socks off? - well not quite. Perhaps my expectations were overly raised, but I found it a little mono-dimensional and lacking in complexity - boring almost..
In terms of maturity it is clearly immature in some respects, but I also found myself wondering whether it might suffer the 'Peter Pan' effect that afflicts many '77's, and grow old before it grows up? - hopefully not.
A great wine to sample a glassful of, but less exciting when quaffing a bottle, and yes, it is immature still and needs a few more years.
Score 7-9
Tom
Others have described it as being immature, and as I tend to be the canary when it comes to doubting the maturity of older wine, it seemed appropriate to pop a lone bottle that has been in my cellar for some time, in order to get a better take on a bottle rather than a glass.
On decanting it was an inky colour in the decanter that could have passed for a wine at first release. The dregs when sipped were fiercely tannic.
After six hours the wine had composed itself, and there was little evolution thereafter.
Did it blow my socks off? - well not quite. Perhaps my expectations were overly raised, but I found it a little mono-dimensional and lacking in complexity - boring almost..
In terms of maturity it is clearly immature in some respects, but I also found myself wondering whether it might suffer the 'Peter Pan' effect that afflicts many '77's, and grow old before it grows up? - hopefully not.
A great wine to sample a glassful of, but less exciting when quaffing a bottle, and yes, it is immature still and needs a few more years.
Score 7-9
Tom