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Popped and decanted and poured and left for all of half an hour.

90% opaque. A glorious deep pigeon’s blood ruby rim.

Nose has the characteristic Niepoort blue fruit touriga nacional, a hint of cherry stone.

Palate very smooth from the off, rich velvety fruit followed by rocky riverbeds with a stream of dark chocolate and kirsch wending its way through. A hint of cream toffee before the tannins start to dry things out again, but the cherry stone and star anise notes last longest, still going after about a minute.

This is tremendous port, comfortably the best 08 I have tried.

Sounds very pleasant George, I only have one bottle of the Bioma 08 which I will keep cellared for a while longer. Would you say these bottles, made slightly differently from other modern day vintage ports, age any differently?

Well, blind, I would have put this as a few years older, I think. While it’s clearly still young, there was a smoothness to it the 2007s and 2011s don’t have yet. But equally there’s no doubt it has the stuffing for the very long haul. The summit of its pleasure must be about 20 years from now, albeit YMMV.

Finishing off the bottle this evening and it is still holding up beautifully so that 20 years to full maturity seems about right.

It has developed a rather attractive hint of a very strict cherry bakewell tart.