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This was wine of the night for drinking now.

It seems there might be alot of bottle variation as previous posters have noted this is a very sub par wine.

It was stunning at our tasting tonight.

Probably the second darkest wine of the night. A deep night purple color.

Nose of sweet allspice, cinnamon, candied fruit.

Loads of dark candied fruit, incredibly smooth finish that lasts as long as the 94. Lush sweet body that coats the palate and on the way down. I liken the 94 to a dark chocolate and the 95 to a milk chocolate.

This is drinking very well now but probably won't last as long as the 94.

93/100.

Vesuvio 1995, 28 hours decanted. Very similar colour and opacity to the ’94. Nose of black fruit, candied, very sweet. Huge nose. In the mouth stewed fruit, cinnamon, only modest acidity. Too young. Needs a little less time than its one-year-younger sibling (one decade?), and excellent. Parker would surely love such a fruit monster.

Also see review of the evening as a whole, and other tasting notes:

• Vesuvio 1990;
• Vesuvio 1991;
• Vesuvio 1994;
• Vesuvio 1995;
• Churchill 1994;
• Croft 1994;
• Duff Gordon 1994;
• Ramos Pinto Quinta de Ervamoira 1994.

sounds quite different to my last 1995, hopefully mine was a bad bottle (I've had 2 bad and 2 good so there is some reason to suspect this).

Is Vesuvio’s bottling line non-sterile? Reports of V differ greatly from what we tasted, in both directions? Is there a general bottling issue with V?

Vesuivo has a very good bottling line and I've not heard of any issues with VA or bottle variation of Vesuvio's. The stewed comments lead me to think the bottles may not have had good storage and suffered some heat damage. A bottle can still be heat damaged and not show signs of leakage as a result.

As have been comment on before, the 1989-91's all suffered some Douro bake, as the bottles were stored at the Quinta before cooling equipment were introduced. I would expect some stewed notes on those, but not on the '95.

But the stewed fruits Vs were the best. It’s the non-stewed fruit ones that were less impressive.