Tasted April 2004, note by LadyR:
Ronnie and I found this bottle of LBV port for 15 euros and the retailer told us it would be undrinkable.
Sooooo, we served it to Stevie to taste it blind.
The cork did not come out properly and it smelled badly like pine-resin. Pine-resin was also put on the very top of the bottle to seal it. Just smelling the wine from the bottle, I thought we could use it to clean our toilet. But...Ronnie put it in the glass to see how it would be....
It has an almost transparant brown Iodine colour, a little bit of sediment was present, since we did not decant it.
The smell is powerfull, complex and perfectly harmonised. Citrus and sweetness are most obvious: also dried mandarine peel, molasses, some (nice) iodine bitterness, smell of Setubal wine (don't know how to describe that) and strangly some hints of seldery that make the smell very interesting and enjoyable.
The taste is completely different, but complex and powerfull (medium bodied): milk chocolate, laurel liqourice, but not overwelming, some raisins and it tastes like very old books can smell ( Eek). Overall, it is very fresh, has lots of primary tastes and it is very elegant.
The finish is creamy with milk truffle chocolate, dried dates, vigs, Dutch caramel candies and at the very end some anise.
When more sediment comes into the glass, the wine has a matured Vintage port taste: red fruit is more obvious and it is very powerfull.
Overall, this is a complex, multi-layered, elegant and fresh port. When tasting blind, Stevie immediately said it was an old colheita from a good colheita house (he mentioned Burmester) that was recently bottled. He (and we as well) adored this port. Stevie did recognise it as an 1967 port, but did not figure out it could be a LBV. Cool Big Grin Cool I am stunned and it was the only bottle...
I'll give it 97 points.