Monthly Archives: July 2023

Great Tasting – Messias Vintage Port

On May 4 we celebrated the 30 Year Anniversary of our wine club ‘The Wine Society 18%’ that was founded in 1993.

To celebrate we decided to have a tasting of Messias Vintage Ports from 1960 up to 2011. There were several of these Vintage Ports that we had never tasted before, so we were very excited to try the 17 Vintages we had collected for the tasting.

Some of the older wines were very mature, but still quite wonderful, even if they were a bit more like tawnies in color and style, with very delicate and elegant, sweet style. The 1970 was ranked as the best wine of the night, perhaps not so surprising since 1970 always seems to perform good – almost regardless of the producer. Several of the other old Vintages like 1960 and 1965 also performed well, so did the pair from 1982 and 1983.

All tasting notes and points from the tasting can be found here.

The Big Fortified Tasting in London 2023

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The Big Fortified Tasting in London is a great event with all kinds of fortified wines at the same place, not only port. As usual we focused on the Port wines and in addition to the general tasting, with more than 30 Vintage Ports, several old tawnies and Colheitas, we also visited Real Companhia Velha’s Master Class “History in a Glass”, with Pedro Silva Reis, President of Real Companhia Velha, and Tiago Silva Reis, Business Development Manager at Real Companhia Velha.

They guided us through seven colheitas and tawnys of diffenrent ages. Starting with Royal Oporto Colheita 2012, followed by the Colheita 2004, 1980, 1977, Carvalhas Colheita 1976, Royal Oporto Very Very old Tawny 1927 and finally Quinta das Carvalhas Very Very Old Tawny 1867. It is always a pleasure to taste these old wines and a tasting like this for sure gives you the history of port and a great understanding of the ageing potential of port wine.