The Late Bottled Vintage Ports are the Cru Bourgeois class of the Rubies. Wines of a single year are bottled (most are filtered when bottled) after 4-6 years in a big wooden vat. They are produced to be consumed without further bottle ageing. LBVs are perfect every day wines, because they offer enormous complexity but show the unique characteristics of the single harvest. This means these wines don't taste alike from one year to the next. Bottles of LBV port are best finished within four weeks of opening. There are some unfiltered LBVs out there as well, but these wines are (mostly) specially labelled as “Unfiltered” or “Traditional” LBV.

LBV Ports are excellent wines for port-beginners because they need to be neither decanted nor finished on the same evening. An LBV wine combines fruitiness and freshness at a moderate price-level. My advice: if you have little or no experience with Port start with a Late Bottled Vintage Port.