1999 Quinta do Sairrao

[MigSU]

1999 Quinta do Sairrão
A subpar year from an obscure producer, obtained as part of a lot at auction. My expectations were very low (I mainly wanted to make room for other, more deserving bottles in my cellar).

+0h: colour already starting to fade. I'd say 70-80% opaque. The reds are there, but this probably wasn't very deep to start with. Nose much better than expected. Fairly lively, fruit very much present, with strawberries and raspberries at the forefront. Some fruit jelly and - for lack of a better descriptor - gummy bears. On the downside, slightly dirty and a bit spirity.
The mouth does not, however, keep up: the fruit is there, but the wine is a bit watery, and the spirit is very overwhelming.


+6h: even more fruit on the nose. Lots of red fruits and berries, still with that slightly 'artificial' tone to it. This is quite pleasant to sniff. Also less spirity.
It has not made for a more pleasurable drinking, though, unfortunately. Still quite spirity on the mouth, which is masking almost everything else. A bit of red fruit and brown sugar, but it's faint. I'm hoping tomorrow it will show better.

+22h: the nose is a bit more subdued, now, but it's still pleasantly fruity. The spirit is all gone and it's mostly clean, so what's left is a quite nice fruit bouquet, dominated by cherries.
I wish the mouth was at the same level, but alas that's not the case. The burning spirit is gone, which is good, but otherwise it's a very unidimensional wine. Pleasant enough, but with no complexity. Some overripe fruit, but that's about it.

+28h: hasn't really changed. Pleasant nose, disappointing on the palate.
I don't think this is going anywhere, but I'll amend this TN if it does. This is a below average Port, with a pleasant nose but not much else going for it. It wasn't unpleasant in any way (barring some spirit that later disappeared), but it didn't have many qualities either. Would I buy it again? No. One could argue that I didn't even buy it the first time - it was part of a lot that had VPs I wanted to get. I valued it at €15 when I evaluated the lot, and I guess that was a fair evaluation, although I'd probably enjoy a good LBV over this VP, so in that sense it was more like a €10 or €12 wine.

[MigSU]

Well, a further 12 hours on the decanter brought some interesting chocolate notes that definitely weren't there before. It's still not a great wine, but it is now much more enjoyable.

[Alex Bridgeman]

Are they an independent family producer based solely around Quinta do Sairrão? Does the label give the name of the company which bottled the wine? Or even better, is there any chance of some pictures to be posted alongside the tasting note?

(And my apologies for having to edit the title of your post but the process of creating the index of tasting notes falls over if it encounters special characters.)

[MigSU]

The front label states that the producer was a certain Quinta do Sairrão - Sociedade Agrícola, Lda, from São João da Pesqueira. A friend of mine tells me the brand is now owned by Sogrape. They haven't been releasing anything, I think, but he tells me Sogrape is thinking of using it to release DOC Douro wines (which they also used to produce under the old management).

Don't worry about the title, I'm a fan of the tasting note index, so I'm for anything that keeps it running smoothly.