2023-07-18: A 1963 Horizontal

[Alex Bridgeman]

Martin is 60 this year. To celebrate this achievement, he generously offered to bring a number of bottles of his 1963 Vintage Port to the Boot & Flogger to share with his fellow Port Forum members and guests. A handful of other bottles also made an appearance at the tasting.

The wines appearing at the tasting were:
1963 Adam, with a cork branded "Carvalhas 1963"
1963 Borges
1963 Burmester
1963 Cockburn
1963 Constantino
1963 Croft
1963 Fonseca
1963 Graham
1963 Martinez
1963 Quinta do Noval, bottled by Army & Navy Stores
1963 Ramos Pinto
1963 Warre
1977 Fonseca, appearing as a mystery bottle poured and tasted blind

The organising thread can be found here.

[Alex Bridgeman]

Thank you Martin! It was a delight to taste 12 different 1963 Vintage Ports side by side. Any one of them on their own would have made for a pleasant evening’s drinking but being able to compare and contrast was really educational.

I believe the evening showed the continued recovery of this vintage from its depths of a down-cycle about 5 years ago. It's behaving quite similarly to the way the 1960 vintage shut down and re-emerged to the glorious wines they are today.

Thank you for organising your first tasting and for supplying the vast majority of the bottles.

[winesecretary]

This was a jolly fun evening, with fully half the wines really rather good. There was a fairly broad spread of points, which reflected that. Thank you Martin very much for your generosity and for your organisation.

[Alex Bridgeman]

Wine of the Night voting

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[Alex M]

An excellent evening - thank you Martin for the contributions and organisation. In summary, I would be happy to own every wine there. Each was a joy to taste and I learnt a lot. The Novak just did it for me. It felt more balanced than the Graham and Warre. Tasting notes to follow.