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Review of the night.

ACPT Tasting, aka Sandeman's Classic VP's of the 60's and 70's

• Sandeman 1960
• Sandeman 1963
• Sandeman 1966
• Sandeman 1970
• Sandeman 1977
• Croft 2000
• Planning
• Review
• Placemats

Caution: the placemats are twenty megabytes.

jdaw1 wrote:Caution: the placemats are twenty megabytes.

about the time to clean up 32 oz of raw meat.

Always a pleasure to meet our fellow tasters in NY and our fellow port lovers visiting from the west coast.

A fantastic night, great port and even better company and some swapping of goods =).

My WOTN was the S 60
followed by the S 77, s70
with the s66 behind.

Unfortunate we all agreed that the s63 was flawed in some way.

I would also like to thank Glenn for sharing the Eufemia which was a very interesting experience.

I think the sandeman makes a great port if your sitting down with the full bottle.

If one were to sit it next to one of the big houses it would probably be overshadowed and probably not score as well as it does.

Btw, the s60 went oh so very well with my medium rare rib eye.

the 60 was my rock star, followed by the 66.

I had a great time in NYC, as usual. Jeff and Josh are great hosts - all I do is show up and drink Port! (And eat red meat!) It was fun meeting TBird, Kevin, and Rich as well.

I'll post full TNs once I'm a bit more caught up, but my favorite Port of the night was the 1970. I thought it had the best balance of fruit, tannins, acidity, and alcohol.

The '63 was horrid at first, but after having been left in my glass all through the tasting and dinner it actually turned out to be pleasant. When we first started, though, it smelled of dirty socks and tasted really off. G-man suspected heat damage. I'm not familiar enough with what happens to Port when it is damaged by heat in the bottle to say for sure, so I'll just accept his judgement. Regardless, I'm going to consider it a damaged bottle for scoring purposes, though after dinner I did finish my glass and it was perfectly acceptable at that point.

I'd probably have to give the nod to the '77 over the '66, but it's a really close call for me. Those two were practically tied, yet still completely different. To me, the '66 tasted like everything g-man and TBird were saying about the '60, but not as dry and not as hot. The '77 wasn't quite as nice all-around as the '70, but has significantly more fruit than the '66. Technically it probably wasn't as balanced as the '66, but I like fruity Port so for me it worked nicely.

Oddly, the '60 was my least favorite (other than the damaged '63). It was far too dry and hot for my taste, though I could understand what g-man and TBird were saying about it. Just not my style, I guess.

After further consideration on Saturday, I think that the bottle of Casa de Santa Eufemia Special Reserve White Port that I brought was also heat damaged. I had hoped that it was just some bottle stink that would blow off with time, but that never happened. It seemed thin and hot to me compared to what I was expecting, having seen it compared to the '52 Dalva Golden White before (unfavorably, but even the comparison says something). The bottles were upright at eye level in the middle of the store, so any heat damage would probably have had to have occurred elsewhere. The t-stopper was in fine shape, so I don't think they'd been upright too long. (Which would have been hard anyway since these were likely bottled in 2005 or 2006. They don't say on the label.)

The Palm was a fine venue for the tasting. The staff was good and we weren't charged corkage. My filet was excellent and I'd be happy to return some day to try their seafood.

Lastly, thanks for sharing your '97 Noval find, Jeff! I now have 3 of those, and both of the other 2 were significantly more expensive.