Price: $19.99
Available At: Excellent Availability across the Alberta Market
If port isn’t a part of your post dinner routine, then the holidays are a great time to do some experimenting with it. To coincide with Christmas, we wanted to try an example that was fairly reasonable in terms of price with good availability across Alberta. With these criteria points, we selected the 2007 Taylor Fladgate Late Bottle Vintage (LBV) Port. For those who don’t know, Port is a wine that is fortified with alcohol that stops fermentation leaving higher levels of sugar in the wine. The house of Taylor Fladgate claim innovation of the Late Bottle Vintage bottling and this claim is probably true since they are one of the oldest established houses being founded in 1692. The Late Bottle Vintage refers to Port aged between 4 to 6 years that was destined to be vintage port. Due to demand, or lack of it, some of these wines are filtered and are bottled be sold as LBV port. These wines will give the drinker a sense of the vintage and are made for immediate enjoyment. Unlike vintage ports, these LBV examples will not improve as much will bottle aging and are available at about a fifth of the price as its vintage kin.
This example was assessed at room temperature, without the aid of decanting.
Eyes - Attractive purplish black hue with nice viscosity.
Nose - Fairly unyielding on the nose initially with notes of blackberry, cedar, talcum powder and hot notes of alcohol. Somewhat medicinal with hints of iodine.
Mouth - A light entry with notes of jammy blue and black berry with good acidity that tempers the sweetness. Its finish goes dark quickly and has reasonable length. This port needs food to knock down its high alcohol level and we found it paired best with chocolate more than cheese.
Conclusion:
This is a nice, simple, straight forward introduction to the vast and wonderful world of Port and paired with the right foods, will provide enjoyment as an accompaniment to the end of a meal or with the dessert course. While it does not carry the same complexity or depth as a vintage example might, it does showcase its characteristics which can give collectors an idea of what they are in store for when they decide to uncork an example from the vintage.
86 Points
If you liked this post, check out our coverage of a Australian sticky in the form of the 2005 Keith Tulloch Semillon.
