Quinta do Noval Vintage Port 2022

Starting with the 2022 Vintage Port, this beauty sports a dense purple hue as well as a blockbuster styled array of jammy blackberry, plums, sandalwood, baking spices, and a kiss of chocolate. It shows the warmer style of the vintage, yet there’s nothing roasted or over-ripe, and it has remarkable purity, full-bodied richness, a stacked mid-palate, and velvety tannins. It’s much more approachable and voluptuous compared to the Nacional and has a beautiful elegance and seamlessness that makes it hard to resist even today. For the tech geeks out there, the 2022 checks in as 19.5% alcohol, 89 grams per liter of residual sugar, 4.6 total acidity, and a pH of 3.61. It’s going to require a decade to start to show some secondary aromatics, and it will have 40 years at a minimum of prime drinking. While the Nacional gets all the attention, don’t miss this. Maturity: 2024-2064. Score – 97. (jebdunnuck.com, Aug. 22, 2024)