1960 Croft

Tasting notes for individual Ports, with an index sorted by vintage and alphabetically.
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Tasting notes for individual Ports, with an index sorted by vintage and alphabetically.
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Will W.
Taylor’s LBV
Posts: 183
Joined: 14:33 Thu 11 Aug 2016

1960 Croft

Post by Will W. »

I had high hopes for this bottle, purchased recently at auction. Alas, the port gods were not with me on the night.

Decanted for three and one-half hours on 25 September 2021, the wine displayed medium amber hues in the glass, reflected handsomely on the rim; largely translucent, a hint of fog was nonetheless in evidence. The nose proved to be a touch understated. Honey and lemon grass - characteristic of the Roeda spine holding this wine erect - along with floral notes and a last whiff of freshness were all discerned readily. In the event, the sum struck me as rather less than its individual parts. At the mouth, light honey and brown sugar tickled the fore-palate, these sweet sensations constituting a hallmark of the Croft style. Further along, lemongrass and cinnamon ran together gingerly across the middle to the back. If there were secondary fruits to be found on the palate, they were incredibly well hidden. The finish was of reasonable length - which I ascribed the wine’s rich (and pleasing) acidity - though there was not much else remarkable about the endgame beyond a late reappearance of the brown sugar. As to the tannins, they were fully integrated as one might expect of a port of this age.

This bottle was not an exemplar of the 1960 Croft at its best; it was admittedly pleasant, albeit somewhat simple. As this same wine has gone down well elsewhere over the last couple of years, in this instance the table seems to have fallen victim to nothing more than an instance of bottle variation, for there were no obvious signs of either poor storage or oxidisation.

-88 points
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