Super evening with great company and great port. Many thanks to Neil for organising us and Julian for placemats, to Charles for his bonus bottle that proved to be far from shabby, to Tony for pulling out a backup bottle of Ferreira, and to Chris for very generously sharing the Dom Pérignon Rosé '02.
The 1966s did not disappoint, many lovely ports in this horizontal. They are though, naturally, evolving. I would have said that a '66 tasted in 2014 and one tasted in say 2019 would have been fairly indistinguishable, as if suspended in time. Not so with this selection. A slight but noticeable drop in depth of colour, still richly red but not the deeper ruby red from 5-10 years ago when the '66s could be routinely darker than the '70s.
The ports from this tasting continue to offer plenty of fruit, but in quite a few cases that fruit is just beginning to exhibit signs of drying out. And for many tasted this time, a slight bitterness is creeping into the taste profile, albeit late on the palate, and not a detrimental bitterness in any way. Just that it was not there previously.
What remains consistent is that you can trust that popping a cork on a '66 is highly likely to bring you a splendid port.
Dolomore, Graham and Dow topped the chart for me, though the Graham being more like Dow than Graham. I threw my own Croft half a point - on this showing it was maybe the only port that offered soft, mature sweetness, without any bitter element. Though if offered the Croft blind and asked to guess which year I would have guessed '63 not '66.
The Warre and Smith Woodhouse I also thought were very good, and indeed the Noval and Gould Campbell were perfectly fine, though perhaps better offerings of both of these have been tasted in the past. Offley and Sandeman didn't manage to reach the high notes this time round, RV was OK but more evolved. Fonseca sadly with a hint of TCA was hampered and the Taylor also had some flaws that held it back. Delaforce was long into its watery grave.
The Ferreira (opened to replace the spot vacated by Taylor), wasn't quite singing - a few of us had a far superior showing recently.
And finally, the T66 Colheita - very lovely indeed.
Excellent evening with lovely ports and great company. Thank you to everyone that worked to make this happen, you know who you are!
I think Mike has perfectly summed up the evening above. I shall add some tasting notes shortly.
I do love the 1966 vintage. Many shippers produced wonderful Ports which are drinking very nicely today and will continue to do so for many years to come.
What fascinated me about the evening was the point Mike has made above about the wines evolving. My belief is that the 1966 vintage is just starting to shut down a little, perhaps at the start of the trough we saw the 1960's go into a 15 years ago (and came out of 5 years ago), and which I maintain the 1963 vintage is starting to emerge from. This will be fascinating to watch and see how the 1966 vintage behaves over the next 5 years - will I be right or wrong...?
Top Ports in 2023: Taylor 1896 Colheita, b. 2021. A perfect Port.
2024: Niepoort 1900 Colheita, b.1971. A near perfect Port.
Wonderful port tasting. Thank you to everyone who made this happen and for being so welcoming to a relative newbie.
The standard of the 1966s remains consistently high and, for me, preferred to the 1963s overall. It was quite tricky to award points at the end as 7 or 8 really were quite close. In the end it was the Dow and the Warre that stood out to me. I was personally surprised how well the Graham scored. It was tasting well but I would have had it 6 or 7 if I had ranked them. Clearly I need to crack open a bottle and correct my error. It was a real treat to try my first Dolamore. What a great wine….sadly none seem to be available in the UK at the moment.
I've added the Ferreira 1966 to the list of wines and links to tasting notes on this page, but didn't have the willpower to add it to all the other 1966 tasting notes. However, you can get to the Ferreira 1966 Tasting Note from any other by going back to the "Review of the Evening" page.
Top Ports in 2023: Taylor 1896 Colheita, b. 2021. A perfect Port.
2024: Niepoort 1900 Colheita, b.1971. A near perfect Port.
To echo the comments above, this was a jolly nice tasting of jolly nice port. But, to echo further the comments above, even ignoring the fact that neither the Taylor nor the Fonseca were right, there is starting to be more variability in these ports than there was 10 or even 5 years ago.
