2005 Niepoort L.B.V.

The 2005 Late Bottled Vintage Port is an unfiltered field blend bottled in 2010. It comes in at 111 grams per liter of residual sugar, but emphasizes power more than sweetness. Beautifully focused and caressing, yet laced with underlying bursts of tannins and serious if subtle concentration, this LBV is flavorful while still seeming perfectly balanced and precise. The wines in Niepoort's vertical this issue are just unrelenting in their ability to deliver flavor, but they are also beautifully structured. This may be the best of that group for structure, too. This does show just a bit of astringency with air. That's just a clue. What happens along the way? It gets better, showing some more muscle the next day, yet it remains approachable. Drink it now or let it age. By Day 3 it was simply superlative. It had not lost a thing. In fact, now it was doing everything brilliantly, showing far better than it did on opening. If I thought it was precise and focused on opening, it doubled down, adding a fair bit of power along the way. It didn't stint on flavor, impeccable balance and fine depth, either. What can you say about an LBV when the score keeps rising with every 24-hour interval it is open? Well, at the least it looks like the best of the Niepoort group this issue, outperforming the young and the old alike. Actually, it seems pretty young itself.