Review: 2007 Dow’s Late Bottled Vintage Port
There is considerable confusion over what Late Bottled Vintage Port is. Vintage-dated, it sounds like it should be very expensive, yet it’s cheaper than many blends. Late Bottled Vintage (or LBV) Port is Port that was originally intended as Vintage Port, but which didn’t make it into a bottle, for whatever reason (typically the barrels are just not good enough for Vintage Port).
LBV Port, in a nutshell, sits around in barrels for many extra months or even years, before it’s eventually bottled and sold. LBV Port can also be made from years that weren’t declared as Vintage years, though that wasn’t the case for 2007. Stylistically, LBV can land just about anywhere on the map.
While it spends far longer exposed to wood than Vintage Port, Dow’s 2007 LBV is a lighter style of the wine — considerably less burly than most Vintage Ports. The nose offers raisins as expected, but there are also some fun tea notes here, along with some wood barrel influence. The body heads tentatively into dried cherry territory, but the texture is on the thin side, with not much more heft to it than your typical glass of Zinfandel. The preserved fruit flavors just need a bit more backbone to prop them up.
B / $22 / dows-port.com
2007 Dow's Late Bottled Vintage Port
$22
