Quinta do Noval Tasting at Berry Brothers & Rudd, St. James, London,
27/10/03
This was an exceptional opportunity to taste some very rare wines
indeed. Quinta do Noval is a
historic property in the heart of the Douro region of Portugal, and has been
producing wines since 1715. This was the first Berry
Bros tasting I've been to and while certainly not cheap, it provided
probably the only opportunity I will ever have to taste some of these wines, and
given the (theoretical) cost of some of them, it was actually very good value.
Having loitered in the shop for a little while, we went back onto the street,
fought off the beggars selling greetings cards (you get a better class of beggar
in St James', don't you know) and were directed into a courtyard off St James'
that I never even realised was there. It felt rather like being let into the
outer sanctum of Berry Bros. We were directed into an anonymous doorway in the
corner of the courtyard and instructed to go down the stairs. I couldn't resist
a quick peek around, and up the next flight of stairs on a shelf was a bottle of
Quinta do Noval 1931. Empty unfortunately.
Descending down several flights of stairs into the bowels of St James' we
came to the Pickering cellar and a glass of Berry's United Kingdom Cuvée
champagne, made by Binet (a very pleasant, full-flavoured fizz, by the way). The
cellar has been converted into a pleasant, well-lit seminar room, complete with
high-tech facilities like plasma screens and decorated with some very
entertaining prints from the gallery next door. We went the old fashioned route
with unassisted voice and spittoons.
On the table as we filtered in were the empties: combined with the heady
scent of port in the room, this was enough to get the palate racing!
We each had 8 glasses, ready poured (rather inconsistently I thought, looking
at some of the levels!), some overly strongly flavoured biscuits and some
cheese. Shortly after the tasting started, plates of canapés were produced:
membrilla and blue cheese, little tartlets, lamb kebabs with mint sauce, baby
yorkshires topped with a healthy amount of horseradish and roast beef, etc. Very
nice, but a lot of it did rather fight with the ports.
Antonio Manuel de Sousa Pinto Agrellos, winemaker at
Noval, with the Noval buildings in the background
(Photograph from Noval's website)
The wines were introduced with great fluency and charm by Christian
Seely, MD of Axa
Millésimes (owners of Disznoko, Suduiraut, Pichon Longueville etc, as
well as Noval), and a man clearly still in love with Noval, which he
managed for several years after Axa bought the estate from the Van Zellers
in 1993. Axa and Seely introduced a number of technical improvements from
the beginning and started a big re-planting schedule. By 1996, they had
replanted around 35 ha of the original 66ha estate, reducing the number of
varieties considerably, concentrating on touriga nacional (now accounting
for 50% of all the vines on the estate) and tinto cao. Seely also set
about increasing the vineyards, on his own admission by spending much time
in the bars and cafes of Pinhao, discussing Portuguese football and buying
the odd square metres of prime vineyard sites in and around the Noval
estate that for whatever reason Noval didn't own. They now have 100
hectares under vine.
The geology at Noval is basically schist, and such soil as there is is
predominantly schist also. Vines are not so much planted in the
Douro Valley, as inserted into holes drilled into the rock! As
throughout the Douro, the valley sides are so steep that terraces have had
to be cut/blasted into the rock: at Noval the vineyard walls retaining the
terraces can reach 8 metres high.
So ... what do all those vines produce?
'William Pickering', Finest 20 Year Old Tawny, bottled by Noval for
Berry Bros. £19.95 from BBR.
This wine arises from a deal struck between Seely and BBR just after AXA took
over Noval. The deal was very favourable to BBR. I got the impression from what
Christian Seely said that it is almost a sort of loss-leader: he certainly
thinks it is much better than Noval's own label 20 year tawny.
An even, pale leathery tawny colour. Good nose - deep extract of black fruits
with dundee cake. Quite light attack, which then fills very well. Very soft and
rounded. Excellent. Quite a bargain (which is not something you normally
associate with BBR).
Quinta do Noval 40 Year Old tawny £68.75 from BBR.
Over 40 years old, of course, as the small print always says. Seely expected
that there would be some wines in the blend that were 50 or 60 years old, plus
of course some younger ones to keep it fresh.
As you always find with the oldest tawnies, this is starting to draw colour back
from the wood again and presents a darkening leather tawny appearance. The nose
is quite tarry with dried fruits and nuts. Excellent on the palate, rich and
round. But also quite tough, with a touch of rancio. I found this a little
unsatisfying: unusually for a 40 yr old tawny, it is lacking a little in
elegance, really quite a bruiser and, I find, just a little unsatisfying. Good.
Tawny ports are aged in oak barrels, often for many decades before being
blended and bottled: they do not improve in the bottle. This is in
contrast to vintage ports which are bottled and sold young, and are then left to
age in bottle. Talking about the selection of wines that will be kept for
tawnies and their dated counterparts, colheitas, Seely said “You have to set
aside Port when it is young as if you are immortal”.
1997 Quinta do Noval, LBV £12.45 from BBR (£10.99 from Noel Young)
Since visiting Noval earlier this year, this has become probably my favourite
everyday port, and I have to admit to preferring it to some vintage and single
quinta ports from other producers.
This was pretty much as I have come to expect. Dark and really quite young in
appearance. Warm dark fruit nose - very fruit driven indeed, with a nice citrus
peel note. Lots of powerful, concentrated fruit on the palate. Complex, full and
very interesting. Great character. Still a bit young: it could easily go on for
20 years, and Christian Seely himself prefers the Noval LBVs - which it is worth
noting are all unfiltered - to have some bottle age: he is currently drinking
the 94. Very Good Indeed.
Now we come to the serious stuff: four vintages of Noval Nacional and the
Noval '55. The Nacional comes from a small parcel (2.5 ha) of ungrafted vines
directly below the house. The vines are on average 36-38 years old and mainly
touriga nacional, tinta roriz, sousão, tinta barroca and touriga francesa:
probably a greater range of varieties than in Noval generally. Sousão is
an interesting variety, as it is not particularly highly regarded by other port
producers, but for Noval it produces the intense colour in the final ports and
also adds an interesting rusticity. Like the rest of the Noval estate, the
soil of the Nacional plot is essentially infertile schist. It is high in potash
with tiny amounts of nitrates, phosphates and organic matter. Although
phylloxera is endemic, Nacional vines live just as long as grafted ones: 50
years or more; and when they die they are replaced with cuttings from other
vines in the Nacional plot. Nobody is quite sure how or why these vines and the
Nacional plot resist phylloxera, although it seems that in the early 20th
Century, the then owner, Antonio da Silva, fumigated the Nacional plot with
sulphur. The Nacional ports are incredibly rare - they are not produced
every year (in years when Nacional is not produced, it will go into the standard
vintage port or into other categories of port in exceptionally poor years - and
only 200-300 cases are produced
1996 Quinta do Noval Nacional
A late addition to the tasting, added by Christian Seely, who has a singlar
emotional attachment to it!
A deep, viscous youngish very dark black purple couples to a rather ungenerous
nose of blackberry, leather and tobacco tar. Very concentrated nose, which
continues on the palate. Really deep, complex and brooding, with some bitter
tannin notes. Extraordinary intensity, but a touch monstrous and brutish. Very
Good Indeed.
1997 Quinta do Noval Nacional
Extremely dark and inky in appearance, with a rather closed, subdued nose.
Excellent fruit - full and ripe. Extraordinary complexity. It is very easy to
see how the 1997 LBV reflects this wine. Really well knitted, balanced and
totally harmonious. Excellent.
I find it very much superior to the 1996 Nacional, but it would be very
interesting to compare the two after 20 or 30 years (chance would be a fine
thing!)
1994 Quinta do Noval Nacional
A young, dark purple. The nose is starting to open out: soft clean fruit with
heavy hints of gentleman's club. Very open on the palate. Much fruiter style
than the 96 and 97, and possibly a little simpler in character. Seems to me to
lack the finesse of the 97. Very Good.
Time for a deep breath and hallowed silence for an almost legendary wine:
1963 Quinta do Noval Nacional
Trying very hard to be objective, and not swayed by its price tag of well over
£1500 a bottle ...
A lovely bright, maturing colour, just browning and fading on the rim. A very
distinctive nose - really quite different: tar and brambles are there, but
there's also a strong note of De Kuyper's cherry brandy, and it's also quite
fragrant, reminding me of a florist's shop and giving it a real vibrancy.
Fascinating stuff.
An entirely stunning attack. Is this really 40 years old? Very pure, incredibly
youthful and vigorous. Mouth-tingling. Loads of fruit and plenty of gorgeously
elegant tannic structure. Can't possibly be 40 years old !!! Bags of life left
in it. Completely extraordinary. Way above being merely excellent. Quite
outstanding. Have it shipped to my desert island, please, Ms Lawley.
I have picked up this label image somewhere: if you believe it
infringes your copyright, please contact me and I will remove it.
Tearing myself away from the 63 Nacional, I turned to the glass of 1955 Quinta do Noval
The picture at left shows a bottle of Noval's 1995 Nacional
vintage port: this is not the wine we tasted next, which was the
"ordinary" 1955 Quinta do Noval Vintage Port.
How could this possibly stand up in the company of the previous wine?
Christian Seely was a little concerned about this too, but he was intent
on showing this, as it was and still is one of his main inspirations for
the future of Noval. This I found rather at odds with the replanting,
concentrating on a very small number of varieties. Touriga nacional and
tinto cão might be better varieties, but in my view the whole panoply of
varieties that used to go into port were one of its joys: some might well
be inferior varieties, but each added its own character.
The 1995 Noval (straight Noval, not a Nacional) has a really gorgeous
colour. Very definitely maturing. A very interesting nose is slightly
drying, with almost a tawny nutty note. Very soft and round. Really
vibrant, yet very smooth. Lingering, though a touch spirity on the finish.
Rather haunting after. Very excellent.
Seely regards “Finesse and elegance” as indicating the house style
of Quinta do Noval and contrasted Noval with most other port producers, in that
Noval only ever comes from what is effectively a single vineyard. Unlike
the big port houses, Noval cannot alter the blend from vintage to vintage by
including more from one estate or another.
There was just time for a quick further contemplation of the wines, a
heart-stopping moment, as others' undrunk 63 was poured into the spittoons, a
brief chat with Christian Seely about the 1964 Nacional (he recommends that if
you have more than one, drink one in 2004 and leave the other, as it will
continue to improve) and to meet his charming mother, before emerging into the
darkness of St James' en route to a little light sushi before the train back to
Feltham where I was being put up for the night by a friend.
Noval is a truly beautiful property in one of the most beautiful areas of the
world. In this photograph, taken by me in June 2003, you see the view from
the terrace looking towards Pinhão and the river Douro (Noval is situated high
up in the Pinhão valley, of one of the Douro's tributaries).
It was a real privilege to attend this tasting which had probably the
greatest concentration of true greatness in wine in one 2-hour slot! Definitely
worth the 6 hour drive to get there and the 5 hours to get back, both for the
wines we tasted and for the re-kindled memories of an excellent visit.
