2003 horizontal tasting

[morteno]

Tomorrow I'm hosting a port tasting for six of my friends. The last time I hosted a tasting, it went like this. This time I'm focussing on the ruby style and I've decided to do a "semi" 2003 horizontal with an odd last bottle.

The line-up

(I apologize for the poor image quality. The image was captured with no proper light source and I had to hurry a bit. I'll probably manage to take better photos of the bottles together/alone if anyone wants me to.)

Graham's LBV 2003
Quinta do Pego LBV 2003
Ramos Pinto LBV 2003
Noval LBV 2003
Niepoort LBV 2003
Romariz VP 2003
Portal VP 2003
... and a Dalva VP 1978

Purpose of tasting
The purpose of tasting both LBV's and VP's from the same vintage is of course to compare the ports withing the same style as well as compare these two styles (when they're both young). The purpose of the Dalva is to show how a mature VP can taste like. It'll be funny to see if the guys prefer the young VP beasts over a mature VP, or even an LBV! Price does matter so I guess the result will depend on whether price is an issue or not.

Drinking order
I thought about drinking the bottles in the order shown above, and each person will have two tasting glasses each (I need to buy more!). Would you recommend any changes to the order in which they're being drunk?

Decanting
I rather not decant the LBV's more than a couple of hours but will try and decant the two young VP's for 5-10 hours. I guess the Dalva doesn't need more than 2-5 hours of decanting?
Any advice to follow here?

I'll return with tasting notes and more general comments about how the evening went after the tasting.

[RonnieRoots]

Sounds like a lot of fun! Will you be tasting blind? That might account for some nice surprises.

[morteno]

It could be fun to taste them blind. But I'm the only person who actually know the different houses/producers by name, so it won't be that big a difference to people. And I would like to know more about the style of each house, so it would be a better education if they weren't served blind.

I agree that it would be fun to see if the two VP's were easily detectable or not, but I rather not start with the Portal as the first wine (if it was randomly chosen as the first or among the first ones). That would make the others taste like Kool-Aid I guess . Of course the LBV's themselves could be served blind, but as no-one (including myself) has any knowledge about the different houses it doesn't really make any sense to do so. To TPF members, it would have made sense to taste blind.

[morteno]

Decanting
Portal and Romariz VP's now decanted. The Romariz showed no sediment, opposite to the Portal which had a thick mud-like sediment (this is only half of it) when decanted through an un-bleached coffee filter:


+0 hours
The Romariz is very accessible and enjoyable with lots of fruit and not too much tannin showing.

The Portal is more closed and dry, with some fruit and pepper. That seems to be in line with my experience with both the 2004 and 2005 SQVP from Portal that also seem somewhat dry. I like the dryness though as it makes it less jammy. Not too tannic either.

Color wise, they look much the same with dark red middle and purple edge, so if the Portal had initially been ink black, then that must -- at least to to some degree -- have turned in to sediment now. In their decanters, they both look black with a narrow purple edge.

I didn't detect any excess spirit and I'm quite prone to that normally.

Of the two, the Romariz is much more enjoyable now, but let's see in 8 hours time ...

[jdaw1]

morteno: please start a tasting-note thread for each of the ports, and post individual pictures there. That way in years to come if I want to know about one of these ports it’s all there and easily accessible. Thanks.

[morteno]

Follow up on the tasting
This was an excellent tasting. People really enjoyed the young and fruity wines.

People were allowed to rank their preferred three ports and the outcome was:
1. 2003 Romariz VP
2. 1978 Dalva VP
3. 2003 Portal VP

As you can see, a strong preference for VP over LBV. QPR wise, it would have looked much different with at least two LBVs in the top 3 (possibly Quinta do Pego and Ramos Pinto) and Romariz would have been the only survivor I think.

Personally I much enjoyed the Romariz. Very open, massive fruits, plenty of tannins and medium+ lengh. On the contrary, the Portal seemed closed and not extremely enjoyable, although I have a weakness for the pepper. Most of the LBVs were worth buying again, except for one: 2003 Graham's LBV. It's simply too sweet and pleasant with no structure.

I've read so much good about the 2003 Portal VP and I must say that it did dissapoint me. I actually prefer the 2004 & 2005 SQVPs over the 2003 VP! There are two explanations for that. The first being that the 2003 may have shut down and second that the price for 2004 & 2005 is about less than half the price of the 2003. This is important when drinking them young where aging potential matters nothing. The 2003 wasn't even that black, which the massive amounts of sediment (for such a young port) clearly demonstrated.

At some point we came to speak of bottle and label design. What great fun that turned out to be as we all had different views on what a good design comprises of. As my tastings are very relaxed (and the scores too), my next score card will include 10 points for design, 5 for color and the rest up to 100 divided among nose, taste and lenght.

As I was too busy having fun and drinking lots of port, I didn't take too many notes and thus I'm not going to create that many TNs but add a comment or two to existing TNs if I have anything of value to add.

I didn't enjoy the 1978 Dalva VP. It's the oldest VP I've ever tasted and I don't believe that it resembles all old VP (far from) but I must say that I feel as if I'm the only member on the board who doesn't really like aged VP -- yet. . I absolutely love aged tawny/colheita, though. My preferences are simple: Young and brutal ruby style or old and soft tawny style. I can live with that

[RonnieRoots]

Thanks for the update! Interesting comments on the Portal. It worries me a bit that it already starts to lose colour this rapidly...

As for older VP's: Dalva is not really representative when it comes to showing what aged VP can taste like. I hope you will experiment some more with other shippers. If you like the brutal style: try Dow's 1980. That's a brutal port with some age on it. I guess you'll love it.

[jdaw1]

In Portugal I tried and really liked the Portal 2003, and recently acquired some.

[ac-fast]

Nice bottels - I`ve tryed some of them
Portal vp 03 is SUPER
Ramos Pinto lbv 03 okay
Dalva vp 78 - okay

Have a nice tasting