Advice wanted: tasting young port

[jdaw1]

A reasonable quantity of 15+ year-old vintage port has crossed my lips. I know what sort of structure and fruit is good. But I have little experience of tasting young vintage port, from cask samples to a handful of years. By what signs do you determine how well it will develop?

[Frederick Blais]

Balance, concentration, mass of tannins, acidity, the lenght on the palate and the Backbone!

[Andy Velebil]

The first two things I look for is big tannins and high acidity. both of which are needed to carry any wine into old age. Then I look for the viscocity on the palate, it needs to be "heavy bodied" on the palate with lots of solid dark fruit. Then structure, is it balanced or not, does it seem laking in anyone area. Then finish, is it big and explosive that lasts a long time or short and weak. Don't forget color, is it a pale purple or black "squid ink" as the 2006 Harvest Trip group coined the phrase. Color can be the first indication of a wine that will or will not make it to super old bones.

[DRT]

I have little experience of tasting young vintage port, from cask samples to a handful of years. By what signs do you determine how well it will develop?

Julian,

It is important to remember that cask samples, whether drawn directly from a cask in front of your eyes or in a bottle labeled "Cask Sample" are not the finished article as they have probably not been subjected to the final blending process. So, when you taste a cask sample of an as yet unbottled VP in VNG or the Douro you can't view its potential in the same way as you would if you tasted it from a labeled bottle 6 months later.

I have found that the best way to judge the potential of these very young VPs is to take an American with you and say "you tell me what you think of that youngster while I drink up this Fonseca 1966"

[g-man]

For you julian,

I'll see if i can find that half bottle of the fonseca 03 that we can commit infantcide on.

[Roy Hersh]

Hmmmm. Well, I have a feeling that soon enough, questions like this will become moot. Imagine what it must be like to try the 2007s more than a half a year before they are even declared, no less bottled?
Stained witches teeth. Astringently puckered mouth. Purple fingertips.
Be very afraid.

[Axel P]

Julian,

from my recent experience with the fortysomething 2005s I can say that you can determine the overall quality fairly good. A couple of things have to be there, such as alcohol, tannins, acidity and - of course -: fruit.

Everything has to be there, but it is running in individual tracks, so fairly easy to point out.

At the very young stage it is very hard to say how the different ingredients will integrate and mature well, but if you have some experience, you can say how the vintages you have tasted have matured...

I do not think that someone can really give me a year on the 2003s, on when they will reach their plateau, but a general tendency is very possible.

I agree on Roy, that it is very hard to say, when the wine gets younger. A cask sample out of the lagar is one of the hardest samples I ever tasted: pleasant, but (for me) impossible to judge quality. But as even the producers have 2 years in the vat to judge it...

Young VPs are pleasant and easy to drink, but tough to be pointed exactly.

Axel[/list]