Quinta do Noval Unfiltered Late Bottled Vintage Port 2014 (90 WA)
The 2014 Unfiltered Late Bottled Vintage Port is a field blend from typical grapes like Touriga Nacional, Touriga Franca, Tinta Roriz, Tinto Cão and Sousão aged for five years in casks. This traditional LBV comes with a long cork. Not yet bottled, it will be released in 2020. Very respectable for the difficult vintage, and particularly considering that I was not a big fan of Noval’s own 2014 Vintage Port, this LBV is impressive in its own right, showing fine power, concentration and structure. The fruit is not quite as expressive as on the 2013—maybe that’s where the 2014 vintage rears its head—but it’s not bad in that regard (unlike a lot of 2014s). By any measure, this (and the 2013 this issue) hold up to a lot of lesser Vintage Ports these days. This will be approachable young—but so are a lot of Vintage Ports these days.
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Quinta do Noval
Douro Valley, Portugal
One of the oldest port houses, Quinta do Noval is also arguably the greatest. It is unique among top port houses in that most of the ports are made from estate-grown fruit and, notably, all of the vintage Noval wines are from the single Quinta do Noval vineyard.