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In honour of the visit of Ronnie Roots, a few regulars gathered in The Bung Hole to sample some 1970 ports.

Links:

• Review of the evening as a whole;
• 1970 Dow;
• 1970 Fonseca;
• 1970 Graham;
• 1970 Sandeman;
• 1970 Taylor;
• 1970 Warre;
• 1970 Cockburn;
• 1970 Offley Boa Vista;
• 1970 Royal Oporto;
• 1970 Royal Oporto Carvalhas;
• Placemats;
• Planning and organisation.

An absolutely splendid evening with Ronnie giving us the perfect excuse for a terrific line up of port. As always, the company was most enjoyable and the venue most welcoming. And I managed to resist both starter and desert!

But what a fabulous line-up of port! Sandeman, Taylor, Fonseca, Dow, Graham and Warre were all really on form. What a great night.

It was indeed a very enjoyable evening with some great company and lovely ports. I'll post some notes when I'm back on a device on which it's a bit easier to type (ie not an ipop). Thanks all for putting together a great evening with a stellar lineup of ports!

It's a line-up of ports like this that really brings home what a wonderful drink Port can be if only you have the patience (or the money) to drink 40 year old vintage port. Some of them were superb, and even the weakest showing of the Royal Oporto was not undrinkable.

AHB wrote:It's a line-up of ports like this that really brings home what a wonderful drink Port can be if only you have the patience (or the money) to drink 40 year old vintage port. Some of them were superb, and even the weakest showing of the Royal Oporto was not undrinkable.

Should we add to this that you should have the patience to wait for a once-in-a-half-Century Vintage to get to 40 years old, too? .

I’m sorry I couldn’t stay for this tasting; it sounded like lots of fun!

JacobH wrote:

AHB wrote:It's a line-up of ports like this that really brings home what a wonderful drink Port can be if only you have the patience (or the money) to drink 40 year old vintage port. Some of them were superb, and even the weakest showing of the Royal Oporto was not undrinkable.

Should we add to this that you should have the patience to wait for a once-in-a-half-Century Vintage to get to 40 years old, too? .

I think that's a bit harsh! I think the '60s, '63s, '66s and '70s are all drinking really well at the moment. Some of these vintages are already fading (Borges, Royal Oporto) and the '63s are probably fading more generally out of the four - but would you really turn one down?

And I can see some of the '77s starting to drink as well as the '70s did last night. Most '77s are really rather good, in my opinion. Who knows, perhaps in 13 years time the '83s and '85s will be as good as the '66s and '70s are now. Maybe we are doing the vintages from the '80s a disservice by drinking them now and not in 10-20 years.

How will we ever find out? Who can think of a way to test this theory?

Reverse angle:

First Graham with 18½; second Fonseca with 17½; third Dow with 7½; fourth Warre with 5½; fifth Taylor with 4½; sixth Sandeman with ½.

The End:

Because he so often loses them, I photographed DRT’s tasting notes.

So, who photographed mine?

Whoops: lesson learnt.

jdaw1 wrote:Reverse angle:

I love the colours showing in this shot. Wish I could have been there to taste them!

AHB wrote:I think that's a bit harsh! I think the '60s, '63s, '66s and '70s are all drinking really well at the moment. Some of these vintages are already fading (Borges, Royal Oporto) and the '63s are probably fading more generally out of the four - but would you really turn one down?

Sorry, it wasn’t supposed to be harsh! The semi-serious point I was trying to make, though, is that ’70 is clearly one of the top vintages of the last 50 years and so the quality of the wine, all the way down to the ‟lesser” or ‟weaker” houses is going to be very high. I don’t think the 1985 Royal Oporto will be up to much in another 15 years, especially compared to the 1970. But then I am more than happy to be proven wrong

Of course, against this, I do wonder if improved wine-making since the late 1980s will mean that in the future far more Port will be far better. But we shall have to wait and see!

Why did I scrawl, at the end of my tasting notes, ‟Barchester Chronicles”? What conversation led to that? Now forgotten, certainly by me, probably by all.

jdaw1 wrote:Why did I scrawl, at the end of my tasting notes, ‟Barchester Chronicles”? What conversation led to that? Now forgotten, certainly by me, probably by all.

Perhaps a reference to the "green foil"?