Boris Johnson has just become mayor of London, and you cannot escape the fact that he can appear as a bit of a bumbler! The man that Arnold “the Governator” Schwarzenegger said was “fumbling all over the place” during a speech, is no doubt an intelligent man and someone who has the ability to run a city. But Boris is prone to cocking his speeches up and making factual errors, which is why people love him.
I conducted a port tasting last week and had a ‘Boris Day’. It should also be known that I'm a port buff, and I think that when it comes to tasting port, possibly over every other wine region, I am particularly good at it. I can, 99% of the time, recall facts at the drop of a hat and am often deferred to by my colleagues, and boss, for port knowledge.
I had a structure for the tasting, and I didn't have any doubt in my mind about the wines I was to show. I'd picked examples of wines to show the wonder and balance that port can have, but also how the search for the mighty pound has cheapened port to nothing more than fortified juice. My audience were a group of co-workers, mainly inexperienced tasters, and they were looking to me for information, for leadership. Oh god….
I gave out wrong dates, I forgot grape varieties, mispronounced words, got confused as to which wine came next… you name it, if I could do something wrong, I did it. The wines I showed had a structure to their selection. I showed a white (Niepoort Dry White), a tawny (Warres Otima 10 year), a mass produced and a 'traditional' LBV (Taylors 2002 and Niepoort 1996) and then a vintage (Fonseca '83). I had thought about including Marks & Spencer's Rose port but couldn't bear the thought of confusing matters and I figure I will wait until I try the Croft version instead. Also, it may be a one year fad that nobody follows in which case I will have wasted my breath for nothing!
Starting with a warm bottle of Niepoort Dry White was not a good plan! Nice dry nuts and a smidgen of honey. A bit of pencil too, but it should have been colder. Ideally, I'd have made white port and tonics, but for the lack of tonic water and lemons. Nobody really got overly enthusiastic about it, and they should have because it is brilliant. The only fault was that I didn’t prepare I told you I was unprepared!
Next up was Warres Otima 10 year old. This was the first Tawny port I ever tried, and every time I try it, I feel like someone who is sleeping with the first person they ever had sex with after being apart for many years. First time, all those years ago, it was brilliant. All new and exciting. Now however, it may tick all the boxes but it just isn't that great anymore. You've moved on and want better! Having said that, for some of the people at the tasting, this was them losing their Tawny virginity, and they thought it was ok! Suggestions that it could be used as an aperitif came forward, tasting comments of "Calpol - not the adult stuff, the good stuff for kids" were forthcoming and surprisingly accurate!
Taylors LBV 2002 was next up as an example of an LBV that had been stripped off all complexity and interest. It was nice enough, big, juicy, jammy, like the Warres, it ticked all the boxes that a port should, but nothing more. Comments from the rookies included "forgettable" and "too sweet" and "too much alcohol". You did get quite a spirity element from it. I still think that the best way to describe these wines is as a ruby from one year, it doesn't even warrant the term 'vintage', they are that mediocre.
The looks of amazement started with the Niepoort LBV 1996. To put this in a same category as the Taylors is like saying a Ferrari is the same as a Honda Civic. The Niepoort showed balance, a bit of juicy fruit, lovely chocolate toffees and tobacco flavours. It also showed the aging potential of a good LBV port, made properly. It was mentioned by a seasoned taster that the reason I'd chosen it was to show the aging potential, and that if it was much older it would have started to lose what makes it an LBV. The actual reason I chose it was that I liked it and wanted to show them a good port. Still, my friend's reason sounded better!
One wine I had put some thought into was the Fonseca '83. Showing a young vintage port would have been pointless, showing an older would have probably been a waste on rookie palates. I also wanted to show what a balanced, 'drink now whilst it is at it's best' port could be like and that limited my options of inexpensive post war vintages to '83, '80 and '75 and I didn't have the older two vintages available! Again, we got more looks of amazement. People, under their breath, saying "oooooh" and, not surprisingly, going back for a second mouthful quicker than they had with the Taylors LBV. There was also a lack of spitting of this wine..... maybe they liked it!
The biggest criticism of the whole tasting though had to be me. Hideously unprepared, not articulate by any stretch of the imagination and with fewer facts than a spin doctor covering a politician's affair, I was a shambles.
Comments