A couple of Ports sampled over the holidays:
1975 Cockburns - this had been open a couple of days when I tried it. The colour pegged it as an older wine, and I at first thought it could be a 60s vintage. Much heat in the nose, and somewhat sweet, but not as sweet as, say, Grahams. I arrived at 1975 by eliminating the only other vintages that would be showing this sort of colour, 1966 and 1963. It was pleasantly long and quite harmonious. The first time I had tasted this wine. I bought 1975 to use as a stopgap until the 1977 vintage matured (which hasn't yet happened), but as these Ports matured, I've had a lot of pleasure from them, albeit in a warm comfortable sort of way, as opposed to a "set off the skyrockets" sort of thing.1970 'Dalva' - I had trouble with this wine, only partially because I seem to drink other vintages more frequently and so lack as much experience with the
70s. The colour was darker than the 75, which placed it outside of the 60s, which are pretty much all lighter now. I thought it lacked the concentration to be a good 83, though the colour was possible. It turned out to be a minor producer, Da Silva, in a pretty good vintage, 1970. Not as sweet as the Cockburns, but with quite good flavour concentration on palate, and with good length. Must write a note to myself to invite myself over to my port-hound friend's place every Christmas....I have had fairly good luck with minor producers like Royal Oporto, Churchill, Rocha and such, in good vintages. At worst, they turn out something more like a late bottled vintage, that is ready to drink much sooner than the wines of that vintage from the major producers.