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On April 26 it is again time for the annual Sherry Festival in Copenhagen. If you love Port Wine you probably also like Sherry, and to there is no better chance to learn more and find your favourite than in this Sherry Festival.
The Festival is hosted by Henrik Oldenburg at ”Sceneriet” on “Det ny Teater”, Copenhagen.
Tickets are available at www.forlaget-smag.dk
We are very pleased that Henrik Oldenburg could again arrange the Port Wine festival in 2021, at the period between two waves of Covid-19. Especially as 2020 was cancelled due to the same pandemic virus.
Before the start of the festival there was a press tasting featuring Dominic Symington. As Dominic became 65 years old in May 2020, he retired from the company management and the tasting held at the port wine festival in Copenhagen was his last official act. The theme of the tasting was “Vintages from my time” and he had selected a rare and exclusive selection, taken directly from Symington’s own stock. We had a wonderful selection of vintage ports, including the following: 1963 Dow and 1970 Graham, both selected because they were the first after Symington’s purchased Dow respectively Graham, 1977 Dow, 1980 Warre, 1985 Graham, 1994 Quinta do Vesuvio, 1995 Quinta da Cavadinha, 2000 Warre, 2007 Dow, 2011 Cockburn, 2011 Dow, and 2017 Graham. All bottles were in mint condition and performed very well. We are very grateful to Dominic for his fantastic guidance trough six decades of port and the “vintages from my time”.
The vintage ports featured at the port wine festival were mainly from 2017, 2018 and 2019, but also some older. Among the better newly released vintages were Quinta do Vesuvio 2018, Quinta do Seixo 2019 and Sandeman 2018. In addition to Dominic’s special tasting, we must mention that we very much appreciated that it was possible to sample a few older vintages, such as Churchill 1997, Quinta do Cachao 1983, Sandemans Vau 1999 and Sandeman 1980. On the tawny side there were several very good old tawny’s and colheitas, such as 1969 Quinta da Devesa Colheita Branco and Palmers 1962 white and 1970 Colheita.
As a general conclusion regarding the last vintages 2018 and 2019, none of these are up to the standard of the spectacular triplet vintages 2015-2017.
For Vintage Port lovers like us the last year’s Port Wine Festivals have been exciting with three fantastic vintages in a row, 2015, 2016 and now the latest released 2017 Vintages. At this years festival it was possible to taste more than 20 Vintage Ports from 2017, more than ten from 2016 and 8 from 2015. There was also an impressive range with more than fifteen older Vintage Ports with at least fifteen years of age. From 2017 we especially liked Warre’s from Symington’s followed by Churchill, Wiese & Krohn and Quinta da Romaneira, but many smaller companies and some companies better known for their tawnies definitely impressed us as well. Some of these were Burmester, Kopke, Messias, Pacheca, Quinta da Sequeira, Quinta da Santa Eufemia, Quinta dos Mattos, Vieira de Sousa and Vista Alegre. As usual you find tasting notes and our ratings for all Vintage Ports we tasted here on our web site.
To honor that Mr. Henrik Oldenburg have arranged the Port Wine Festival for more than 30 years, Ramos Pintos led a master class with extra focus on the 30 year old Tawny. Master blender Ana Rosas of Ramos Pinto, and her cousin Jorge Rosas, CEO of Ramos Pinto wanted us to understand the enormous effort and persistent work over several decades that is needed to create these old wines.
Following the instructions by Ana Rosas we elaborated and blended our own 30 year old Tawnies from a range of base wines directly from Ramos Pintos cellars. Finding the balance between old complex heavy wines and younger wines with fresher notes and vivid acidity to create the perfect balanced wine is indeed a work of art. We can only conclude that our attempts led us closer to the goal but still far from the final blend by Ana Rosas sold by Ramos Pinto. Actually Ramos Pinto is one of the best producers of tawnies with indication of age.
Henrik Oldenburg and Forlaget Smag is arranging the annual Port Wine Festival at Børsen, Copenhagen on Monday November 4, 2019.
There will as usual be many representatives from port producers during the festival and the importers display a wide range of different port types.
Tickets are sold from Monday, August 12. Find all information about participating importers and producers and buy tickets on http://forlaget-smag.dk/
We visited the very first Copenhagen Sherry festival on April 25 at ‘Det Ny Teater’ (The New Theater) in Copenhagen, Denmark. The festival is arranged by Henrik Oldenburg, the man behind the annual Port Wine Festival in Copenhagen and also author of many wine books, not only his famous Port Wine book but also one about Sherry.
There were about fifteen importers present at the festival, with Sherries from almost twenty different producers. A wide range of Sherries, from dry Fino to very sweet Pedro Ximenez could be tasted.
We appreciated the Amontillado, Oloroso and Palo Cortado types of Sherrie’s best, perhaps they are most like the port wine in balance. Some of the Pedro Ximenez were also very interesting but they are tough to taste due to their overwhelming sweetness and is in that sense a very different wine compared to port wine.
Among the producers available there were many well-known large producers, but also smaller producers with more limited production. We especially enjoyed the wines from Almacenistas, some delicious 30 years old from Bodegas Tradición and finally the great wines from Bodegas Baron where the Soluqua Amontillado impressed us with its complexity.
Henrik Oldenburg, the man behind the Port Wine Festival in Copenhagen, and Forlaget Smag is on April 25, at long last, organizing the very first festival in Copenhagen for Sherry! For details and tickets, please see: http://www.forlaget-smag.dk/SherryFestival.aspx
We hope to meet you in Copenhagen over a glass of Sherry.
It was with great expectations we went to this year’s Festival in Copenhagen. Not only because we were looking forward to taste some 2016 Vintage Ports, the latest generally declared Vintage, but also to learn more about the Colheitas from Andresen in a special tasting with the owner of Andresen, Carlos Flores dos Santos and their wine maker Alvaro van Zeller.
Andresen are producing both Colheita and Vintage Ports, but according to Carlos they have always considered themselves of being a Tawny and Colheita house. After participating in this tasting we can understand why. Vintage Port lovers as we are, we have of course tasted many of their Vintage Ports, and even if they are good they are not competing with the best in that category. Their Colheitas on the other hand are indeed very good and in this tasting we got the chance to taste two Colheitas from each decade all the way back to the 1960’s, and on top of that two older fantastic Colheitas. 1937 Colheita bottled already in 1980, meaning it had about the same time in wood as on bottle. This was a great wine, showing elegancy, complexity and a quite light body, but with a long lovely finish. The last wine was more recently bottled Colheita 1910; actually it was bottled when 100 years old in 2010. This wine has an enormous concentration and a fat lovely aftertaste which never seems to end. Indeed a top quality Colheita!
Carlos Flores dos Santos and Alvaro van Zeller
In the open tasting we focused on the Vintage Ports and we found some interesting new producers we never got the chance to taste before. Dona Otilia, Martha’s, Boeira and Lacrau were new to us and we also tasted Quinta da Oliveirinha from Alves de Sousa for the first time. The latest Vintage 2016 was quite well represented and some of them are very impressive, we especially liked Sandeman and Dow’s but there were others that also impressed on us like Churchill, Kopke, Barros and Quinta da Romaneira. Even if 2016 is generally declared and 2015 is not there are for sure some really good wines made from 2015 as well. One that we have been very impressed by since we tasted it the first time last year is Niepoort Vintage Port 2015, and once again it shows that the best from 2015 can match many of the 2016 Vintage Ports.
Overall this year’s Festival shows that port wine is more popular than ever in Denmark. There is a huge assortment of all kinds of port available from many devoted and passionate importers, many of them with great knowledge of Port in general and there is always something new to learn when talking to them over a glass of port. So a big thanks to all of you for all the generosity, both with wine and knowledge. We are also of course sending our compliments to Mr. Henrik Oldenburg for the great arrangements. This is indeed one of the highlights on the year for port lovers like us.
Henrik Oldenburg has written a new book after his outstanding ‘Port wine’. The new one is called ‘Portvin i glasset’ (‘Port wine in the glass’). Both are available only in Danish but easy to read for both Swedes and Norwegians. In the new book he promotes port wine by saying that Port wine can be enjoyed nearly every day and not just at Christmas. The book is a good introduction to Port wine and he tells you almost everything about this wonderful wine; description of the various types of port, best vintages, what kind of glass to use, how to decant and in which decanters and of course his own favorite port wines. It is indeed a wonderful wine, and sitting in an arm chair reading the book while sipping on a glass of port, just enjoying life, is also wonderful.
The new book will only cost 70 Danish Krone, and it will be available when the Port Wine Festival is taking place on November 6 in Copenhagen. See you all there!