1977 California Port is Equally Delicious and Mysterious

Everything about this bottle of 1977 J.W. Morris Vintage Port fascinates me. The wine is six years older than me, from an era when California wines numbered far fewer and received far less respect. Also, it’s made in the style of vintage Port, meaning the grape juice was stopped during fermentation by the addition of brandy, resulting in a wine with high alcohol (20%) and significant residual sugar.

I bought this mysterious relic at auction about 18 months ago because it seemed interesting and it only cost $30. But I’ve found it difficult to get much information about this wine.

I found a reference to J.W. Morris’ California port in a 1989 LA Times article: “Quady and J.W. Morris make some of California's most consistent vintage and non-vintage Ports.” My searching turned up a few more references of J.W. Morris’ fortified wines, but most of the hits consisted of broken links or archived bits of information from the late 1980s, back when the interweb was just a twinkle in Al Gore’s eye.

CellarTracker.com, the world’s best tasting note and cellar management software, doesn’t have much information on this stuff either. One user tasted the 1978 vintage in 2007 and rated it a stellar 96 points. Wow.

Where are the grapes from? I’m not exactly sure. “California” is the only place named on the label. I’ve come across a bunch of references to this wine coming from Black Mountain Vineyard, but Black Mountain Vineyard appears to be a winery in Healdsburg, in Sonoma County. Maybe the grapes were sourced from the area around Healdsburg? At the last minute before this post I found out that K&L Wine Merchants is selling a 1978 vintage of a “Black Mountain Vineyard Sonoma Port” from J.W. Morris, which I assume is the next vintage of this same wine. So I guess the grapes come from Sonoma...

Which grapes are in the bottle? I don’t know. I can make an educated guess that at least some of the wine comes from zinfandel grapes, but that’s only because zin has been grown in California for a long time and frequently used in dessert-style wines. Perhaps there’s some petite sirah in here as well? Maybe some mourvedre? Who knows...

After all my searching, this wine still remains something of a mystery. And — you know what? — in the age of instantly-available information, that’s kind of cool. (Although, if a knowledgeable wino stumbles upon this post, please tell me more about this delicious stuff!)

Finally, my tasting notes:

The cork was soaked all the way through, but I found only a slight sign of past seepage. When I finally got the cork out, I was a bit worried the wine would be spoiled, but those worries quickly disappeared. This wine is a bright ruby color with thick legs in the glass. The aromas are strong, with caramel, dates and an alcoholic-smoke aroma that reminds me of a Highland single malt. Overall, a pretty interesting on the nose, although the alcohol does burn a bit. On the palate, the tannins have waned and the acid is a little low, which means the caramel, fig paste and dried apricot flavors really dominate. The alcohol provides weight, and the richness of the residual sugar and the mature fruit flavors are enough to keep this wine together. Raisins and caramel linger on a very long finish. This is not an epic dessert wine, but it’s a darn good one, and very intriguing.

89 points IJB