2024: Undisturbed & Other 1970s - Tues 8th October

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1. Cockburn 1970 (from Blenheim Palace, Dec 2023)
2. Cockburn 1970 (Oporto bottled & stored; released 2016)
3. Cockburn 1970 (believed UK stored)
4. Dow 1970 (from Blenheim Palace, Dec 2023)
5. Dow 1970 (BBR)
6. Dow 1970 (believed UK stored; from an unopened case)
7. Warre 1970 (from Blenheim Palace, Dec 2023)
8. Warre 1970 (Wine Society bottled)
9. Warre 1970 Private Cellar (Oporto bottled & stored; released 2016)
10. Sandeman 1970 (from Blenheim Palace, Dec 2023)
11. Sandeman 1970 (Wine Society bottled)
12. Sandeman 1970 (late release, from magnum)

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Placeholder for the scoring sheet

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Many thanks to Neil for putting this one together.

I drew some conclusions from this tasting:

• storage matters. The four "undisturbed" bottles were almost unanimously preferred, against their siblings of other (nonetheless believed good) provenance
• the 1970 vintage is creeping into old age. Fruit is drying out now for the most part, a little bitterness creeping into the finish on the palate.

[PhilW]

Individual shipper scorings:

Ck70 - 1st place Blenheim (30pts), 2nd place UK Stored (20pts), 3rd 2016 Release (15pts)
D70 - 1st Blenheim (32), 2nd BBR (19), 3rd UK Stored (15)
W70 - 1st Blenheim (33), 2nd Private Cellar (17), 3rd Wine Society (9)
S70 - 1st Blenheim (31), 2nd 2012 Release from Magnum (24), 3rd Wine Society (10)

So, clean sweep for the Blenheims.

Then, overall Wine of The Night:

1st S70 Blenheim (26pts)
2nd D70 Blenheim (16)
3rd W70 Blenheim (10)
4th S70 2012 Release from Magnum (6)
5th= D70 BBR & D70 UK Stored (3)
7th= Ck70 Blenheim & Ck70 2016 Release (1)

Once again, the W70 Private Cellar showed it's limitations, and the late release Ck70 also disappointed. Clear evidence that long-time storage in Porto isn't good?

[PhilW]

An enjoyable tasting, though we did have more faulty bottles than expected; the Wine Society did not do well on this occasion.

The W70 Wine Society bottle (which I brought) was full of TCA; it was the last bottle from a batch of three of which the other two had been excellent, and indeed the batch was purchased due to a previous excellent 6-bottle batch from which all had been great; hey ho. The W70 Private Cellar was not good (unspecified fault, it was just wrong) and the S70 Wine Society similarly. I also (erroneously) had the Ck70 2016 release marked faulty, but that turned out to be a nasty glass.

Roughly agreeing with Mike and Neil:
- The Blenheim bottles were all very good (I had the Dow top, the group had the Sandeman top).
- The Private Cellar bottle again failed to impress, as they mostly (though not all) have at previous tastings, which is disappointing given their premium.
- 1970 as a vintage does seem to be reaching that point where storage has become critical, with the well-stored best still excellent, but the lesser wines starting to fade.

Much thanks to Neil for organising the tasting, it was a very enjoyable evening.

[winesecretary]

Genuinely interesting tasting. I concur with the other commentators that on this showing 1970 is becoming less reliably friendly.

[Bertie3000]

Really enjoyable tasting. Thank you Neil for organising. My conclusions were very similar to others in that the Blenheim showed best. Definitely time to start drinking up the 1970s I have. I also really enjoyed the Sandeman magnum which came close to the Blenheim bottles in my view.

[Alex Bridgeman]

I didn’t attend the tasting, but I am very interested to read about the 1970 becoming less reliable / showing old age / losing fruit.

Didn’t we say something similar about the 1960 vintage 15 years ago? And about the 1963 vintage about 10 years ago?

Do I sense a pattern? Do we need to leave our 1970s alone for 5-10 years to allow them to get over their mid-life crisis?

[Andy Velebil]

I didn’t attend the tasting, but I am very interested to read about the 1970 becoming less reliable / showing old age / losing fruit.

Didn’t we say something similar about the 1960 vintage 15 years ago? And about the 1963 vintage about 10 years ago?

Do I sense a pattern? Do we need to leave our 1970s alone for 5-10 years to allow them to get over their mid-life crisis?

Reading this I was thinking the same.

Though I’ve not had the same experience with 1970’s as these tasters did in this tasting. I’ve very recently had some 1970 that were wonderful.

That said, at 54 years old bottle variation will start showing for any wine. And any small flaw during the bottling process will be more pronounced with time.

[flash_uk]

I didn’t attend the tasting, but I am very interested to read about the 1970 becoming less reliable / showing old age / losing fruit.

Didn’t we say something similar about the 1960 vintage 15 years ago? And about the 1963 vintage about 10 years ago?

Do I sense a pattern? Do we need to leave our 1970s alone for 5-10 years to allow them to get over their mid-life crisis?

I would fully expect the 1970s to get over their mid-life crisis. Once they’ve done that, I expect they will be different to the 1970s of say 5 years ago. They will I’m sure still have some fruit, and on the whole still be dependable. Nevertheless in these times now as compared to say 5 years ago, they are losing some fruit, and my instinct is that their average score is perhaps around one point down.

There still seems to be quite a lot of the stuff around, so I’m going to keep drinking mine for now. And in 5 years. And in 10 years. And…

[Christopher]

Were the bottles for each vintage shown blind or sighted please?

[flash_uk]

Were the bottles for each vintage shown blind or sighted please?

They were sighted Christopher. See placemats at bottom of this post.

If I recall correctly, we first voted within each shipper, giving 3,2,1 which gave a rank for the bottles from a shipper. And then had a separate WOTN vote.

I may even distantly recall that there was some restlessness about whether all of the 3/2/1 votes had to be committed, as some may have felt a wine deserved zero (if for example faulty in some way).