5/6/2013 - theportguy wrote: 100 points

An Affair to Remember: 1851-1994 (Sammamish, Washington): My oh my. This is a legendary bottle that I never thought I would get to try in my lifetime. We have a regular segment in our For The Love Of Port newsletter where interview personalities from the Port trade. One the standard questions we usually ask in our interviews is “What is the one Vintage Port you wish you could try, but never have.” I would (unscientifically) venture to say that 80% say “The 1931 Noval Nacional.” My friend Roy Hersh helped to secure this bottle for an epic “bucket list” tasting, and the buyer paid $10,000 for the bottle. Despite seemingly good provenance, when we used Port tongs to open it, the kitchen immediately started to smell like wet cardboard. It was a corked bottle, and undrinkable. We were obviously extremely disappointed, but the buyer didn’t seem to be too worked up about it. Unbeknownst to use, he had discovered another bottle of the 1931 Noval Nacional and had flown to the Bahamas to pick it up from the famous Graycliff Restaurant. The bottle was pulled from a bag, places on the counter, and our roller-coaster of emotions went from sadness to jubilation! The wine was light amber in color as it was decanted, and we breathed a sigh of relief when we smelled some wonderful aromatics wafting up from the decanter. After carefully pouring everyone a glass, we sat down to taste and write our notes. There was a little spirit on the nose, with a touch of red fruits and even some light floral notes. On taking the first sip, there was an intense flavor of bight cherry and red fruit, with some crazy complexity of swirling espresso bean, dark fruit, brown sugar, and some black cherry. The immense, evolving mid-palate was smooth and balanced. The finish was incredibly long, with the flavors, acidity and residual tannins dancing playfully seemingly minutes after I’d swallowed. This was likely a one-in-a-lifetime bottle for me, and while it might be tempting to rate this wine higher because of the experience, the wine in the glass before me earned this perfect score all on its own.

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