Agri-Roncão, DR, Vintage, Port, Portugal 2017

Historically speaking, the port laureates in our Best In Show selection have tended to be fine old tawnies -- burnished, silk smooth and shimmering with fragrant allusions. This year it's different -- not least because this Vintage Port laureate comes from the magnificent 2017 vintage, unquestionably one of the greatest in the last four or five decades. It's a dense black-purple in colour, with a powerful mill of aromas which evokes not just black fruits like sloe, damson and mulberry but vegetal and spice notes, too and even a little fragrant pine. On the palate, it is rich, dense, powerful and close-textured as vintage port must be in youth, luscious with those same black fruits, fragrant with tea leaf and petitgrain, and supported by extravagant but toothsome, chewy tannins. This is an attractive price for port of this quality. Of course it needs longer -- but it is also exciting to try now in its first, thrilling flush of youth.

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