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Opened on 31 October 2007 and drunk after 7 hours decanting.

A pale, golden rose colour showing plenty of age on the wine. A perfumed nose, elegant, tones of freshly baked brioche. Thick texture in the mouth with sweet maraschino cherry flavours and a mature, nutmeg elegance. The typical Christmas cake aftertaste from Grahams lasts a long time. This is drinking beautifully today and is fully mature and elegant. My second favourite wine of the night. 6-5 or 92/100.

Alex,

I notice that your second best wine of the evening actually outscores your favourite (The LBV at 91/100). Whats the reasoning behind that? Expectations?

Alan

I often prefer something that I would put at a lower points score if I were to score, which I don't. The reason is that you can recognise the qualities that make a wine better but prefer another.

If we go back to the Brum off-line, we could easily have voted the Martinez or Malvedos wines of the night whilst assigning higher scores to the Fonseca 1970 or Graham's 1963. The Martinez and Malvedos were instantly enjoyable whilst the other two were more refined, complex and needed more work.

The WOTN in my mind is the one which I will remember most when I look back on the evening - most often it is also the best wine but sometimes it is a good wine which caused me the most surprise.

This is one of those occasions. The Graham '75 was a lovely drink but the LBV surprised me more and just hit a deeper chord in my memory.

Alex