Winemaking: Tinta Barroca (70%), the balance from old vines.  The grapes are trodden by foot in lagares. Fermentation lasts four to five days, producing an excellent extraction.  Alcohol 20% vol. Total Acidity 3.45 g/l pH 3.89 Baumé degree 3.7

My tasting note: this vintage was not declared by many shippers. I felt it was lacking in concentration and structure, looking a little developed.  Tawnyish even.  I guess Tinta Barroca does tend more to flesh/sugar than structure.  The 1982 had a fern-like sweet, earthy vegetal character with pine needle forest floor, a gentle but persistent nuttiness and liquorice spice.  Not unpleasant at all, but just somewhat faded.  In fact I quite enjoyed it with some parmesan shavings.

Winemaking: This wine was produced from Quinta do Bom Retiro grapes and bottled after 2-3 years.

My tasting note: Funnily enough, if there was a wine in the line up which looked like an out-lier – too pale to be a Vintage Port – it was the 1934.  But it was an out-lier for all the right reasons – this vintage was a stand out at the Cockburn’s Bicentenary Tasting in 2015 (check out my notes of that glorious Port here).  Though super pale, clear and bright, it retains a rouge hue.  It has a medicinal (pleasantly so) edge to its red cherry fruit – think sucking on the sweetest, gentlest lozenge!  The fruit has a silky, round quality (light glycerol), with a touch of roast peach stuffed with amaretti biscuit.  Ever so lingering. Lovely, very elegant with pot pourri florals as it opens up.  A slip of a Port, which holds really well, never faltering, even some hours later.  Fabulous.

Winemaking: This wine was produced from Quinta do Bom Retiro grapes and bottled after 3 years.

My tasting note:  my sample had enough sediment to spread on a slice of toast.  It seemed a touch musty on nose and palate with iodine, stale drawers/pot pourri, cedar and amaretti biscuit.  In the mouth it still pushes along spicily, showing liquorice and orange peel hints.  Alcohol adds a touch of warmth and impetus to the palate.  Though it has a bit of fight left, his bottle needed drinking up whilst the ’34 struck me as an enticing proposition for a few years yet.

Winemaking: When first produced, this sweet white port was used for blending and adjusting the sweetness of other wines. Produced in 1884, aged in oak and bottled after 10 years, this wine was selected by Adriano Ramos Pinto for his own consumption due to its exceptional quality.

My tasting note:  Ramos Pinto was founded in 1880, so this Port came from early acquired stock. -It had a cloudy mahogany core with a saffron penumbra and olive green rim.  The nose shows its age, lively, spicy and fruit chutney with an incendiary touch of volatile acidity to pep along the aromas and flavours raher deliciously.  Though the flavours are, like the core, a little occluded, fuggy, to start once it hits its stride there is not stopping it.  It holds together beautifully – a hum of amaretto-ness, with pot pourri florals, peach tea and, building on the finish assertive (in a good way) liquorice spice.  The finish has a terrific salty, sweet and sour tamarind-like dimension.  Terrific length, lift and layer.  Lots of detail, teased out, seemingly atomised and left hanging in the air, in my mouth, in my breath.  Wow. Deeply impressive!