Sarah Ahmed – The Wine Detective

In my September Douro Boys’ report here, I wrote about a unique “Time is on my side” tasting of 2007 ports organised by Dirk Niepoort. A tasting gauntlet, it challenged us to taste 60 hours’ worth of 2007 vintage port in 2 hours.  To explain, we tasted 15 different ports from the recently released 2007 vintage. Each had been decanted either one or two days in advance and another sample opened (but not decanted) on the day of the tasting. The identity of the quinta or shipper was revealed, but not the time of opening.

Dirk’s point was to highlight the dangers of rating vintage port without giving it an opportunity to evolve. As Dirk puts “it’s port not whisky, it’s alive!”  The outcome – an overwhelming preference (shared by my peers) for the ports that had been opened two days beforehand.

In Dirk’s opinion, at the very least, samples should be tasted in the morning then in the afternoon to gain a better insight into the quality and future of a vintage port – “it takes time to express itself and first impressions change.”

The reason for recounting this is that American port specialist Roy Hersh, who publishes the website For the Love of Port,  has just published his 2007 Vintage Port Forecast, see here.  In my September report I mentioned that Hersh wins big respect from the port producers (and me) because he tastes a bottle on a dozen different occasions before rating it – you’ll see that his forecast is based on a marathon  six months of blind tasting and 350+ individual tasting notes.  For the love of port indeed!  It’s a fascinating read with some surprise ratings –  I’d really recommend you check out this work of time.