Tag Archives: Portal

Portal Vertical tasting 1995 – 2014

The Wine Society 18%, celebrating 25 year anniversary this year, had a tasting of the house Portal on March 15, 2018. Out of the 15 Vintage Ports released from Portal, we had 14 in this tasting. This includes some Single Quinta Vintages from Quinta do Portal and Quinta dos Muros.

Portal

Please read more about the tasting here. You will also find tasting notes and scores for all tasted wines.

The 2018 Port Wine Fair in Roskilde, Denmark

Once again this annual fair was a huge success with two sold out tasting rounds, a lot of representatives from the Producers and some really nice Port Wines to taste.

As usual the fair is focusing on quality port like Tawnies with age, Colheitas and of course Vintage Port. We are impressed by the many older Vintage Ports available on the Danish market and there was also a possibility to taste many fantastic examples of mature Vintage Ports. For example we very much enjoyed Sandeman 1967 and 1975, the later on Magnum! We also got to taste Dow’s Vintage Port 1975 on Magnum. Both 1975’s are of course mature, but you should remember that it ages a bit Sandeman 1967slower on Magnum, and often the best selection of the Vintage is bottled on the larger bottles. So both of these are really nice at the moment and will be so for some years to come.

It was also possible to taste mini-verticals of several producers.
Taylor: 1997, 2003, 2007, 2008 (Vargellas) and 2015 (Vargellas).
Warre’s: 1980, 1985, 2000, 2001 (Quinta da Cavadinha) and 2006 (Quinta da Cavadinha)
Sandeman: 1967, 1975, 1988 (Quinta do Vau) and 1999 (Sandeman Vau), 2013 (Quinta do Seixo)
Quinta da Romaneira: 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2015
Quinta das Lamelas: 2009, 2013, 2014 and 2015
Portal: 2007, 2011, 2013 (Quinta dos Muros) and 2014 (Quinta dos Muros)

It was also the first time for us that we could taste Graham’s The Stone Terraces 2015 Vintage Port. A fantastic young Vintage Port that will be very interesting to follow during the coming decades.

Finally we also tasted some lovely old ports matured in wood, like Palmer 40 years Tawny, DR 50 years White and DR 70 years Tawny. Fantastic wines if you prefer port wines matured in wood.

Copenhagen Port Wine Festival

Thank you Henrik Oldenburg for continuing the Port Wine Festival. We have only missed one of all these wonderful Festivals since the start in 1988. This year Cristiano van Zeller gave us a wonderful history of Port wine and red wines in Douro. The family has been in wine business since 1620 and his daughter is now the 15th generation in the business. In the tasting room we could taste around 50 different vintage ports, the oldest a Martinez from 1987 but also four vintages from the 1990s. As usual Portal was most generous with 6 vintage ports but both Borges and Quinta de Roriz were also very generous and let us taste 4 different vintage ports of excellent quality.

Fourteen dealers presented the already famous 2011 vintage for tasting. The vintage is very exciting and sound. It seems to be a long runner even if some houses continue to do a more modern style of vintage port. Many compare this with the famous 1963 vintage. Read what point your favorite house got from us in the Last tasted section to the right.