25 Nov 2022

Great Porto and Great Wine

Great Porto and great wine.

One and the same, yes.

Great Porto must be appreciated as if it were non-fortified wine, and it makes no sense to compartmentalise it.

We recently set up a masterclass of Niepoort Ports from 6 different vintages to test this assumption. Niepoort’s head Port maker Nick Delaforce took us and selected customers through these Ports.

They all happened to be Late Bottled Vintage; a category that has been so debased by the industry in the past decade that it no longer carries any perception of quality. The existing Port Wine categories that attempt to explain Port styles do nothing to guide the consumer in terms of quality.

Against this background, our aim was to shine a light on high quality Portos to show what enjoyment and pleasure they give. It mattered most that they were made by a fantastic producer whose whole ethos is driven by quality and has been for 6 generations.

We had the time and calm to taste these Portos to understand their finesse, judge the characteristics of the different vintages, and enjoy their individual merits.

The vintages that we tasted were:

2005 - Ready and delicious. The lines of time are being kind to this one

2007 – Probably the finest of all and still showing the best flush of youth

2009 – The most powerful of this set, which reflects the vintage. Still developing its character.

2012 – Super approachable and elegant.

2015 – Youthful and classically structured but great balance and length.

2018 – Exuberance and flare propel a wave of fine fruited enjoyment and love

The difference between vintages was astonishing, not just in how they were tasting on the day, but the fundamental profiles of the wines. It was surprising to explore how different vintages of the same Porto category would pair with very different foods.

To quote Nick Delaforce: “There’s LBV, and then there’s LBV!”

Niepoort treat their Late Botted Vintage like a ‘baby vintage’ Port and that quality shone through as we tasted the evolution of these wines over the last 20 years.

We found the love that Port has lost right here.