1983 Smith Woodhouse

[Alex Bridgeman]

From half bottle. Deep ruby red in colour, surprisingly dark; 70% opaque. Nosing of fresh raspberries and a touch of mint. Satin texture, lovely sweetness on intial impact, then a wonderful balancing acidity grows up in perfect harmony. Superb palate with huge volumes of fruight, although slightly too light to be perfect. Fabulous aftertaste and fruit driven finish of massive length. This is near-perfect port. 94/100. Drunk 24-Sep-12. Decanted 3½ hours.

[DRT]

This is near-perfect port. 94/100.

[Alex Bridgeman]

I confess, I am absolutely astonished at how good this port is. I fear that I may even have suffered some label bias and. Even too stingy. This is probably worth 95/100 - it really is that good. What a great bottle to open for a Sunday night!

[DRT]

This is near-perfect port. 94/100.

This is probably worth 95/100

Still =

100/100 = Perfect.
99/100 = Near-perfect.
90/100 = Not perfect.

Where is the line?

[Alex Bridgeman]

No, no, no!

I agree that 100 points is perfection - port as good as port can ever get.

However, when you get close to perfection, even minor flaws can cause one or two points to be dropped. Given that you and I have both drunk Nacional '63 and also recently Graham '27, I can illustrate this with an example. Nacional '63 I scored at 99 points (I have had it show just a tiny bit better when it had longer in the decanter) but the Graham had slightly less focus and balance so was scored at 97. Both were near perfect. The difference was probably as much down to personal preference as to anything else.

[DRT]

No, no, no!

I agree that 100 points is perfection - port as good as port can ever get.

However, when you get close to perfection, even minor flaws can cause one or two points to be dropped. Given that you and I have both drunk Nacional '63 and also recently Graham '27, I can illustrate this with an example. Nacional '63 I scored at 99 points (I have had it show just a tiny bit better when it had longer in the decanter) but the Graham had slightly less focus and balance so was scored at 97. Both were near perfect. The difference was probably as much down to personal preference as to anything else.

I can feel an "almost exactly" argument coming on here