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Sold by the glass in a wine bar in Dublin, in the decanter for 2 days.

Deep and opaque red colour, right into the rim. Swirling the glass leaves pink beading.

Minty nose from the alcohol, with soft blackcurrants and vanilla custard underneath the mint. In the mouth the initial impact is of a sweet and fruity wine that brings a dominance of cheek puckering, teeth drying, mouth watering tannin that takes a lot of slurping to integrate. But when it does integrate, it reveals a wonderful, sweet strawberry and bramble fruit salad that is just delightful to hold on your tongue.

Eventually, you have to swallow. When you do it is just like swallowing a mouthful of Gala melon. This sensation goes quickly to leave a long, long cheek tingling aftertaste of chocolates and coffee that is delicious.

I have never found a Niepoort that I have really enjoyed - until now. This is a bit of a tannin monster at the moment but is still really good to drink and very enjoyable. It will take a long time before it loses its primary flavours and moves into the secondary stage of life, but is also the first 2000 vintage that I have found that has come out of its dumb phase. It went superbly well with a rare sirloin steak and Bearnaise sauce.

8/8 on the Uncle Tom scale or 93/100.

Alex

Sounds great. Were you in the company of DRT? What did he make of it?

My favourite Niepoort too, I had been leaving mine well alone until they were 9 or 10 but I might be tempted to re-assess my planned 'dirnkogram' distribution and try on earlier. I found I have learnt quite a lot about port trying the old bottle from a bulk lot at various stages in its development.

jdaw1 wrote:Sounds great. Were you in the company of DRT? What did he make of it?

Sadly DRT and I were in Dublin on successive nights and not at the same time - poor planning, you could argue.

However, DRT seems to believe that when in Dublin one should drink that dark and murky Liffey water that he refers to from riotious establishments located in Temple Bar. I have a different thought and I seek out the refinement of the relaxing wine bars around St Stephen's Green to partake of a glass or two of vinous nectar.

One day he and I will be in Dublin at the same time and we'll have a competition to match Liffey water against vintage port, but until that day he will just have to continue to read my notes.

ajfeather wrote:...I had been leaving mine well alone until they were 9 or 10 but I might be tempted to re-assess my planned 'dirnkogram' distribution and try on earlier.

I've tried this particular vintage 3 times in the last 2 years and have been pretty impressed with it, rating it no lower than 90/100 (early 2006) and then 93-94/100 (late 2007). It seems to need a lot of time in the decanter to open up, but is full of primary goodness even at such a young age. In my opinion, this will be much better in 15-20 years, but will not change a great deal in the next 10 years.

I believe that it's one of those wines which is so enjoyable to drink now that you might as well enjoy it today while you wait for some other wines from recent vintages to mellow and mature.

Alex