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I need som help.... I`ve got 2 bottels of port, One Tawny and one white.

As the label says, they are bottlet in Denmark, i guess in the `60
Would it be possible to drink them ??? or will they taste like shi.....



And what about LBV - how long til can i storrage LBV`s beforre drinking- Is there any "rules" about age ???
I`ve had some LBV 2001, drink now or stay in the cellar ???

Assuming they are a regular tawny and white port... they are not meant to keep in the bottle for that period of time, but you could be lucky and it could still be drinkable. But chances are that they are very cloudy and have either madeirized or have gained a sort of sherry like profile. But you could get lucky. I once bought a regular white port from Hooper, that had been in the bottle for 30 years. It was very good.

As for LBV's: I have only bad experiences with cellaring filtered LBV's. Unfiltered LBV's are a different story. They are usually well capable of ageing at least 10 years, and often more. I've had some very good LBV's from the 1980's from Niepoort and Quinta da Romaneira. The oldest LBV I've tasted was a 1967. It was fantastic. Completely turned into tawny, but still very good.

Check the cork - if it is a normal, full size, driven cork then the bottles are probably fine. But if it is a T-style cork, then those bottles were intended to be consumed shortly after bottling and so probably haven't aged well.

But you never really know... even a full-sized driven cork can be protecting a bad bottle, so there's no guarantee.

Why ask..?

Pop them and tell us!

An aged tawny may well be fine at that age, if a little tertiary; a standard tawny might be pretty dire - but probably still drinkable.

Again with the white, if it's a standard wine it could be acidic, but an aged one could be dark and very agreeable.

- Open them, they won't get any better!

Tom

This reminds me of an old bottle of Tawny I found in my grandmother's cellar not too long ago. It was bottled in the 60'-70'ies or so. It was called Diamond. Unfortunately I don't remember the house. Anyhow, the funny part was that the back label had the word 'diamond' spelled using phonetics . (I've even heard rumors that back then, wine wasn't very common in Denmark either )

As Tom says, I need to find the bottle and see what has happened to the Dajmårnd tawny.

RonnieRoots wrote:As for LBV's: I have only bad experiences with cellaring filtered LBV's.

I've had decent luck aging filtered LBVs, but age to them is like to table-wine: 10-15 years is an OLD wine. What I noticed in particular, though, is that they are best the moment they are opened, and degrade almost entirely over the first hour.

morteno wrote:This reminds me of an old bottle of Tawny I found in my grandmother's cellar not too long ago. It was bottled in the 60'-70'ies or so. It was called Diamond. Unfortunately I don't remember the house. Anyhow, the funny part was that the back label had the word 'diamond' spelled using phonetics . (I've even heard rumors that back then, wine wasn't very common in Denmark either )

As Tom says, I need to find the bottle and see what has happened to the Dajmårnd tawny.

I've now found the two bottles, one Dow's Fine Tawny and one Pocas Junior 'Two Diamonds' Tawny ("Rich Port").



It's in Danish - notice the "tu-u dej-a-mons" . It's weird because the headline says "two diamonds RED port wine" - what? Tawny isn't red, it's brown. Or tawny

It could be fun to know when they were bottled. None of them mention this. I think the only information for that purpose is the number from the official slip:


Here's how it looks after a good shake up:



Now on to the Dow's:



The Dow look somewhat the same regarding sediment.

Unfortunately, I can't pop these bottles now and taste them as I will wait with that until the next time I host a port tasting for my friends (in a few months from now). But how would you think they taste? I would expect them to be pretty bland, if not sour and bitter. Or bittersweet

From the pictures that you've posted, I believe that the two diamonds is a Ruby or Reserve port rather than a tawny - despite the back label saying the opposite. The reason for this belief is that the front label says nothing about the port being a tawny style and it must do so if it is to receive the IVDP sticker as a tawny port. I think the back label is just an error by someone writing a label in Danish and not know too much about port.

However, if it is a ruby port then it will have turned very tawny in style. I have had a couple of bottles of old ruby port (selaed with a T-cork) that we believe were bottled in the late '40s or early 50's. They were very frail and delicate and drank best in their first hour or two, but were very interesting to experience. I quite like that delicate nature that old part attains. You will have a really interesting experience - hopefully a good an interesting one!

I have no experience at all on the tawny and will be very interested to read what you find.