Wine & Spirits - December 2013 - (Page 85)

2011 Vintage pORt Our blind panels tasted 40 Ports from the 2011 vintage for this issue. Joshua Greene, our critic for the wines of Portugal, rated 20 as exceptional (90+) and 3 as Best Buys. Find a complete list of wines tasted and all reviews at wineandspiritsmagazine.com. 193225 100 | Quinta do Noval $650 2011 Porto Vintage Nacional ^ The voice of the earth, amplified. This is the fruit of a mixed planting on terraces near the house at Noval, a Portuguese response to the challenge of phylloxera. Determined to plant his indigenous local vines on their own, nacional roots, instead of foreign rootstocks, Luís de Vasconcelos Porto fumigated the soils on these terraces with a series of sulfur treatments. The vines he planted in the 1920s, including a significant portion of sousão, are still producing to this day. As if in vindication of his efforts, this 2011 tastes like the entire Douro compressed into one mouthful of wine. The tannins seek out every space in the mouth, yammering all the while about schist and sun and berries while the wine itself goes silent, or the brain's attempt to codify the scents of cassis, black cherries, figs and earth shuts down in the face of a perfect beauty, as if listening for the sound at the peak of a meteor shower in the night sky. When Nacional hits, as it did in 2011, it can live for a century or more. § Vintus, Pleasantville, NY 193089 100 | Quinta do Vesuvio $127 2011 Porto Vintage Capela ^ This 800acre property is just upriver from the dam at the Cachão da Valeira; its quinta buildings include a 19th-century chapel (capela) restored by the Symingtons, who purchased the property in 1989. They now farm 333 acres amid the steep hills and valleys on this south bank of the Douro. Charles Symington makes this wine by blending two small lots; one of touriga nacional and alicante bouchet from low-yielding blocks close to the river, fermented together in a small lagar; the other, picked three weeks later, a co-fermentation of touriga franca and sousão from two blocks that are higher in the hills. They come together in something numinous, in a wine that tastes like the horizon line of the sea, if you could see it from the top of Vesuvio. Somewhere in the insane rush of Douro flavor, in the scents of iodine and savory herbs, the gamey richness of fruit rolling across the palate, the smoky green schist tannins, there's a line of refinement, a supple beauty that isn't about aggressive power. The flavor is tremendously long, a rush of energy that will carry this wine for decades. § Premium Port Wines, San Francisco, CA 191317 98 | Taylor Fladgate $268 2011 Porto Vintage Vargellas Vinha Velha ^ Vargellas, acquired by Taylor Fladgate & Yeatman in 1893, is a quinta on the south bank of the Douro just over a mile upriver from the Cachão da Valeira. The property, including the old terraces replanted after phylloxera by Frank Yeatman, have provided the core of the firm's classic vintages ever since. Five blocks of vinhas velhas, now more than 100 years old, rise up on stone terraces behind the quinta buildings. In 1995, David Guimaraens made the first Vargellas Vinha Velha, using a small selection of fruit from these blocks; the 2011 is the seventh vintage, a brooding, dense, dark mouthful of delicious Port. The intensity of Vargellas's tannins often makes the wines from the vineyard inaccessible when they are young. In this vintage, those tannins feel as smooth as polished marble, while the flavor is explosive, the volume turned to 11, a blast of schist and wild blueberries, exotic spice and wildflowers. There's a completeness to the wine that makes it feel luxurious, or helps you imagine how luxurious and complex it might be if you were to taste it again in 50 or 60 years. § Kobrand, Purchase, NY 191318 97 | Taylor Fladgate ness. The tarry density and umami tannins are slow to yield what becomes seemingly endless flavor, dynamic and sleek. A pure revelation of the Douro, this has the stamina to outlive many of its peers in a long-lived vintage. § Kobrand, Purchase, NY 193087 97 | Dow's $82 2011 Porto Vintage ^ Dow's Vintage is often remote on release, a kernel of impacted flavor. This vintage is more like a perfect sphere. All the elements are there, from plump, superripe fruit to polished schist tannins, suspended in a round, complete integration that refuses to break apart. Smoky, bright, luscious and bold, it's a wine that's easy to imagine being still fresh and complex at 50 years old, and it's not a reach to believe it will live well to 80 or 100. This is a blend of Cima Corgo fruit from Bomfim and Douro Superior power from Senhora da Ribeira. § Premium Port Wines, San Francisco, CA $116 2011 Porto Vintage ^ The greatness of this wine is subtler and more hidden than many of its siblings in 2011. It's skinnier than Fonseca, austere in a Taylor-Douro Superior way, clouding the brain with schist dust before revealing its more sensuous blue-fruit rich- 193088 97 | Warre's $90 2011 Porto Vintage ^ Half of the lot for this wine comes from the Quinta da Cavadinha, WINE & SPIRITS DECEMBER 2013 http://www.wineandspiritsmagazine.com http://www.dows-port.com/ http://www.quintadovesuvio.com http://www.warre.com/

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Wine & Spirits - December 2013

Wine & Spirits - December 2013
Editor’s Note
Happenings
Contents
Fined & Filtered
Acid Trips
The Great Whiskey Shortage of 2013
Spirits
Gadgets and Gi
New Destinations
Where to Eat & Drink in Seattle
Turning Champagne into Wine
Barolo & Formaggio
Douro, No Apologies
Walla Walla Cabernet
The Best for $10 or Less
Overview
Champagne
US Sparkling Wine
US Cabernet Sauvignon
Alsace
German Riesling
2011 Vintage Port
Barolo & Barbaresco
Rioja
US New Releases
International New Releases
Wine & Spirits Top 100

Wine & Spirits - December 2013