Pintas Wine & Soul: Vintage Port 2019

Parker über: Vintage Port

-- Parker: The 2019 Pintas Vintage Port is a field blend from more than 40 different grapes from very old vines (around 90 years). It comes in with 108 grams of residual sugar and was bottled in May 2021 after 19 months in old chestnut casks. Wine & Soul has gradually made itself into a top Port producer, easily competing with the old and big names. This is another great example, a fine companion to some brilliant ones in the last few vintages. Which is the best? This has a pretty good chance of claiming that prize, but let's come back around 2035 for a better view. In the meanwhile, it looks like one of the finest 2019s I have seen. Intensely powerful, this is a very different style, happily, than the producer's table wines. With table wines, they avoid rusticity and make polished wines. That's not to say this is too astringent, but this Port lets it all hang out, with some old-school power and intensity. The beautiful fruit is pretty fine too, and it smells great. To be sure, it is a little subdued by the pure power today. A few days later, the lovely fruit asserts itself more. A few more days (six days from the first pour), it had hardly budged again. If someone told me that it had just been opened an hour earlier, that would've been believable. It then adds fine mid-palate finesse, never seeming ponderous but always seeming deep. This is going to need at least a decade of cellaring. That just gets you to approachability, as I don't think it will be close to ready at that point. This is all about potential, but it is so brilliant on so many levels that it makes me want to lean up on it right now. To be sure, there's a lot left to prove. 97+/100