Vista Alegre LBV 1996, bottled in 2002. "Traditional" and "unfiltered" are both to be found on the label. This port is in a dark brown (not black) bottle and has a cork. Bought for ┚¬ 14,50.
I managed to snap the cork in two pieces while extracting it from the bottle. The other chunk came out cleanly in the second attempt.
I decanted the first 2/3 of the bottle freehand and the remainder through an unbleached coffee filter. There was a bit of fine sediment left in bottle that concealed some grit that came out when I rinsed the bottle. A lot (more than was left in the bottle) of the fine sediment found its way into the coffee filter.
On decanting this LBV had the typical smell that most ruby-style ports have right after opening the bottle, a little melting butter kind of aroma, if you know what I mean. Colour is dark ruby. Even though this LBV has aged about 12 years in total, it still feels like it could age another 12 gracefully. I'm beginning to understand why most TPFers prefer unfiltered LBVs. The palate was fruity with raisins.
Decant +2 tannins have become far more prominent than on decanting, but I must say that the first try was only a short time after eating sauerkraut for dinner. The tannins may have been prominent from the beginning, but gone unnoticed due to the sauerkraut... Wonder what it'll be like after some more time in the decanter.
Decant +4 Very little or no change.
To be continued...
