For The Love Of Port

had to serve it a glencairn glass

Had to Google to find out what that looked like - perfectly adequate for an old tawny.

Niepoort 78 VP

Not often seen, I secured a full case of this at auction back in 2014 and mentioned it to Dirk - 'It's a bit light' - he cautioned.

Well it was - now on my fourth bottle out of the dozen, it's a bit lovely now, and now looks set fair 8-8

Croft 10 yr, bottle 1992

A kitchen cupboard bottle, with dust and fluff around the neck, but none elsewhere - lovely juice..
If anyone wants to indulge a blind tasting, I'm willing to wager that a 10yr with 30yrs of bottle age will see off a freshly bottled 40yr..

I bet a small tear drop fell to the ground watching all of those lovely, empty bottles being dumped into the recycling bin.

Dirk Niepoort calls us 'The bottle killers' because we get through so many old bottles and don't hang on to the empties..

But if the year of bottling the 10 year old is 2017 its still old.

Meh - a youngster!

10yr and 20yr TWIOA age really well - I won't touch one with less than 10yrs in bottle.

The Ervamoira '94 is one of the obscurer members of my cellar collection, which currently sports 643 different VPs. For Moses to pop the exact same bottle three days after I did, is really pretty weird!

1994 Ramos Pinto VP "Quinta de Ervamoira". Opened last night. Was ready to enjoy on a pop and pour. Super smooth and rich. Delicate spirit. I hope it doesn't fall apart over the week. Cork was perfect. Really dark in the glass with a minimum of sediment in the bottle. Inspired by me decan...

Nothing like rushing through a stash..

..am about to decant the second of five bottles of Ervamoira '94

Bottle #1 was decanted 29th April 2008

Recent quaffs.. Vargellas '82 - light wine but a lovely bright colour in the glass - probably peak time for drinking now, 6-5 Pocas '70 - nice enough juice but a little over the hill, 3-2. Oporto bottled, the bottles are strangely lightweight. The glass was marked 70cL, but checking the capacity aft...

Sandeman 34 Re-corked by me on 15th July 2008 after it started leaking. Previously had a mid shoulder level. I corrected the level with 10mm glass marbles before inserting the new cork, something I don't do anymore. One of the joys of using a computer to choose my next bottle is that it sometimes tr...

1970 Offley Boa Vista VP. A leaker that moved to the front of the queue. Has one of the sphere looking capsules that are a pain to cut off. Tried using the tongs, but neck of the bottle was quite narrow. Tongs rested on the shoulder. Didn't heat high enough to cleave the bottle. Ended up cutting th...

I'm a little leery about long term storage in my basement...I've been tracking the temp and humidity for three weeks now and there's a pretty big temperature fluctuation throughout the day (it's been as much as 9 degrees - 61 degrees low and 70 degrees high). There's always at least a 6 degree vari...

Port on the right wall, other wines on the left wall. You do realise that when you put two wine racks in a room, they breed.. :D Incidentally, do you know the duct tape trick when using conventional wine racks? The steel horizontal bars on those racks are really bad at scraping back labels, but if ...

As I'm sure many here can attest, the temp in the Gaia cellars gets surprisingly warm. I've never actually checked it (lacking a convenient, accurate, portable thermometer) but it would not surprise me at all if the warmer parts of some of those cellars reach 72-73 degrees during the summer. They f...

Re: do you really even need temp controlled storage? That is the question. In my experience, the biggest cause of damage to fine wines, of all types, is not sub optimal temperature control, but exposure to light. Any sign of sun bleaching on an auction lot bottle label is a big no-no in my book. On...

Today the humidity where I live is 18%.

Hmm.. I'll wager your local drug store does a big trade in moisturiser and lip balm!

Is EuroCave what you’d recommend for someone that needs to store VPs for 10-20 years? They’re expensive but seem to be the only true reliable option for very long term storage. There is an awful lot of rubbish written - and then blindly parroted over and again by other writers without checking.. wh...

If I were to redo my tier rankings in order of typical prices on the retail market it would be like this. So QPR latter in each tier list [dance2.gif] Tier 1: Taylor's > Graham's > Noval > Fonseca > Warre's > Dow's > Vesuvio Tier 2: Sandeman > Niepoort > Croft > Ramos Pinto > Ferreira > Smith Woodh...

That analysis may make sense for high-end Burgundy and other "investment" wines. But it doesn't make sense for Vintage Port. The pricing of fine wines is all relative, and wine investors often include a percentage of VP in their portfolios. I don't buy the idea that Burgundy prices could ...

Don't be blind to events at the Fed and other central banks. Wine is a classic 'alternative investment' and has had a very long bull run borne of conventional cash investments returning negative real returns. There seems to be some resolve now to get the financial markets back to the old normal - th...