... and people who drink Port less often are seeing it as nearly the end of Port drinking "season" ... as if there really was such a thing.
So hurry, get your bottles of VP lined up before you know it ... it will be summer time.
I am actually planning what I want to be drinking in the next two months from my cellar. Do you have your own queue? Do you plan ahead or just execute on demand?
Please do share which is more your style when "having at" your Port collection. Also what is in your near term (this weekend or through April) and over the next six weeks or so?
I'm a pack rat. I collect things because they're shiney. I put them in my pile of shineys and look at them periodically to admire them. Mmm... shineys.
Sadly, my wine fridge works in much the same way. I have filled it up with various bottles that I like, but it's psychically painful to remove a bottle from the fridge and drink it. Even the Colheitas that supposedly don't improve with age - I'm sure I'll keep most of them for years. Taking one out and drinking it gives me a strong urge to replace it immediately.
So I don't plan ahead. When I do manage to work up the courage to deplete my stash, I just do it.
Then I go admire my pile of shineys to make me feel better. And then I hit wine-searcher.com to look for replacements.
I need to pick something out for this weekend for Stewart to reward him for his endurance and creativity in helping me put together the new FTLOP. It was a great collaboration. He talked me out of doing a homepage with a picture of many barrels in a wine cellar. Each barrel would have been a link to a unique place on the website. In retrospect, that was a pretty lame idea. However, when we agreed on the new look and feel and what components were going to be inserted into which slot, the rest was deftly and cohesively tied together by maestro Todd. So, now to root through the cellar to find a worthy bottle. Hmmm. Old Colheita which I know he loves, or fabulous VP. Tough decision!
First off, I have to say that I agree with Roy: the idea of a port “season” just doesn’t work for me. Though there are those hot and super-humid summer nights (especially here in NYC) when the thought of popping a rich, sweet bottle of VP just doesn’t feel right. But save for those particularly sweltering times, there’s not much stopping me from craving a bottle of port on any given day of the year.
When it comes to deciding on what to drink, I have a very effective deterrent to digging into my cellared bottles: I live in Brooklyn, but store my ports in a little storage room in my father’s basement out in New Jersey. It’s not an official wine cellar by any means, but just by luck it happens to stay at a perfectly cool and consistent temperature all year. I can only assume that, knowing me, my modest collection of about 20-25 bottles would probably disappear quite quickly were it in my own home (which would be a shame since everything I own is from 92 or later).
Being that I am barely making ends meet here in the mecca of high living costs, I don’t have a whole lot of room in my budget for port – in fact, if I had even an inkling of financial prudence to my credit I wouldn’t be buying any VP at all – and yet somehow I’ve managed to drink a good deal of it lately, as well as put a bottle away here and there. I suppose the fact that I have officially converted my current girlfriend (who is in better financial shape than myself to be sure) into a VP enthusiast has helped a lot. It doesn’t take much convincing these days to get her to pitch in on a fine bottle of port for the evening.
The nice thing about being in NYC is that there is a wide range of accessible stores to purchase a worthy VP at. So basically, my current planning process for what to drink next goes like this:
1. Send text messages to my girlfriend that say “port port port port port!!!” and drop other not-so-subtle hints during the day to let her know that I’m obsessing about drinking a bottle of port that evening (“Yes babe, I want to drink port tonight…again!”).
2. Decide which store we’re going to stop at on the way back from work to make our selection.
3. Spend a long while staring at the shelf and being totally indecisive until she finally forces me to make a choice.
4. Get home – decant.
5. Take a walk down the block to pick up an assortment of accoutrements: usually some variety of strong blue cheese, almonds, dark chocolate, and perhaps a pastry or two.
6. Cook dinner – eat.
7. Spend the rest of the evening sipping port and gorging on cheese and chocolate.
Although I don’t normally think of my decisions about what to drink on a given day in terms of a larger game plan, I guess we’ve been on a general kick of drinking younger stuff lately. Being that the 97’s, 00’s, and 03’s are widely available at the moment, we’ve been drinking a lot of them – partly for the fact that we can’t always afford a well matured vintage, and partly because I’d like to get some sense of which ones I want to target for cellaring before the prices start to escalate.
I do often scour the net for notes and reviews so as to better inform my choices when purchasing, and I certainly lean toward a few of my favorite houses when it comes down to it, but all in all I have a pretty fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants way of going about it. I hope that one day I’ll have the space and the resources to build a large collection, but for now I’m happy with my haphazard methodology.
Frederick Blais wrote:At the moment, I received my 2 bottles of Dalva 52... I don't think I'll hold myself for a a long time before I open one
Would you believe I've seen the oldest bottling I've ever seen of this today. Before I flew home I was at the celler of a friend of my friend and he had a 1952 Dalva Golden White Colheita, bottled in 1981. It was a handblown bottle, with many indents. Kinda like a 1970 Niepoort VP bottle, but full of imperfections in the glass and several large "dents" in the sides. Very cool to see and I tried to buy it, but no such luck
I would have taken a picture, but my camera broke on the trip, and besides loosing all my pictures from it, I wasn't able to get one of the bottle.
As someone said : "Yes Rebecca , a Port season does exist" .
For me , It usualy begins in earnest at the begining of the NHL season ( early Sept. ) and ends at the begining of the Stanley cup playoffs ( early April ) .
During this period , my regiment usualy consists of 3 or 4 glasses of tawny each morning , followed by some VP once a month . ( Working the night shift for the past 4 years has facilitated this program . )
However , this has come to a halt , having been elected union president of my barganing unit and being transfered to the day shift .
As a result , I find myself opening and enjoying more VP's and drinking less Tawnies .
A definite blessing !!
Of course , the fact that my better half isn't into Port and our 2 little ones ( Aline 6 and Félix 4 ) are starting day camp for the summer , also takes up energy .
But hey , " wear there's Port there's a way "
Vintage avant jeunesse/or the other way around . . .
Tis true for me....I drink a bt less in the summer only because by the time I get indoors in the long days of our Alaskan summer it is near 11 PM....so I just mearly have less time each evening to drink Port.
But heading into summer, i do have quite a few VP's standing on death row, principal among them is one of the six 94 Vesuvio's. Based in the sound advice on this site recommending an extensive decant on it, I simply haven't had the forsight any one day the past two months to decant it 12+ hours ahead of time...so there it sits with an obviously good lawyer!
I try to stick to the same routine every year so as not to upset the fine balance of the planet's climate.
My port drinking season begins on 1st January in celebration of the dawning of a New Year. It ends no sooner and no later than 31st December to allow me to toast the departure of a year gone by. It is an excellent routine that ensures no part of the year feels neglected :devil:
I'm with Derek, no season for me, and it stays cool at my house all year, so I'm good to go anytime.
As to what I will be drinking, I usually do not plan to far ahead, unless I know we are having guests. I have a vauge idea of a 66 Croft, a 1980 Smith Woodhouse, and a 1995 Malvedos in the relatively near future though.
