"The best wine I've ever done" - Dirk Niepoort

We had a preliminary tasting of some of the 2011 vintage ports on Wednesday. This was very useful as it gives us a chance to form first impressions before tasting again next month. The Niepoorts impressed us the most with their complexity, perfume and structure. With the Bioma due to spend almost another year in cask this will be very special. Niepoort itself will be bottled shortly and is already looking superb. These are characterised by fresh fruit aromas and flavours, floral notes, fine tannins and precision.

We've long been huge fans of Quinta do Vale Meão's amazing table wines, but we've never had the chance to offer their port before. What better debut than such a great vintage? With old vineyards comprising over thirty grape varieties on alluvial, granite and schist soils they have complex terroir and have made fresh fruit laden wines of great density and colour and freshness.

Some of the best Fladgate Partnership wines share these characters too: the Taylor and Croft in particular, while I found the Fonseca a tad surlier and more powerful on the day. Fladgate has worked very hard indeed to get its eye back on the high-end vintage port ball. But as Serena Sutcliffe says, one never tires of Taylor's. And you don't argue with Serena.

Incidentally, of the Symington ports we offered earlier this week, I enjoyed Warre the most.

Port on tasting today. We would've liked to have shown you the 2011s today but volumes are apparantly so small that some of the houses barely had enough for Wednesday's trade tasting. So we decided to do the next best thing. 2009 Taylor and Niepoort Bioma will be available to taste from noon at the usual place. People can be afeared of port, so come and try some in civilised company. /CW

Offered subject to confirmation for shipment early 2014

Other formats available