Do-it-yourself tawny port

[Clare D.]

Good morning, forum members,

I apologize because I'm sure this topic has come up before. I've tried to search for it, but it's very difficult to get a good result because the keywords show up in so many different contexts.

This weekend, I drank my first glass of port, and it was a case of love at first taste. I've never before been overly fond of any particular alcoholic drink: I enjoy tasting the complexities of an excellent wine or well-brewed beer, but the flavors of wine and beer themselves don't appeal to me, and I drink the occasional glass of liqueur, but the flavor tends to be "one-note" and boring. I like the cleanness of higher-alcohol drinks, but the alcohol flavor burns out everything else for me. (I'm not one of those people who can drink a German schnapps and tell which fruit--if any fruit--it came from.) The closest I've come to having an alcohol preference was to bring home a bottle of Bristol Cream when I was sixteen years old. But port instantly struck me as ... well, as my thing. I'm just sorry I didn't find it a couple of decades ago.

The way in which I met this port, though, was unusual. A new acquaintance has two small port casks that she keeps at home and refreshes every so often. (She ordered the casks from Australia.) When I asked her what goes into the casks, she told me that any tawny will do. I'm trying not to jump to conclusions and assume that she herself is adding "any tawny"; she may know what she's attempting to achieve.

I now realize, having done my homework here, that one of the casks probably had very young port in it (sweet and not complex). She had mentioned that they had recently refilled it. The other cask tasted fairly young as well; it was dark ruby in color and tasted more fruity than anything else. But I can't be too ungenerous about her blending skills. After all, I still fell in love.

But, while the idea of having one's own cask seems like a great conversation starter, I can't help but think, based on what I've read here, that it's not a very good idea. In fact, it seems like a horrible idea. It seems that the eventual results will resemble properly aged tawny port the way wine I make in a tub in my kitchen will resemble a fine Bordeaux. If I had such a cask, I wouldn't be able to bear adding really good port to it; who wants to open a $70 bottle and dump the contents into a mix? But if I never add really good port to it, how can I expect what's aging in my cask to turn into really good port? And since what's bottled and sold as tawny port is stopping its aging process where the master blender thinks it ought to stop, why should I assume that my aging it further at home will make it into better port?

But I recognize that I know next to nothing. So please, experts and dilettantes, come to my rescue. Do you keep a port cask at home? And if so, which of the "any tawnies" do you add to it?

Gratefully yours,

Clare D.

[Andy Velebil]

Hi Clare,

I'll let others hopefully chime in first before I do. But an excellent first question for us.

[Moses Botbol]

How many liters is the cask?

Personally, I think it may be futile competing the port houses in making your cask taste like theirs, but I too would love to have a cask of port at home. Not to mention how expensive even with cheapo port it would be to fill a of any decent size. I imagine it would take at least 100 liters size cask to play it safe.

Look forward to hearing from people with real expertise on this topic. Every port fan in history has thought about their own pipe of port at least once.

[Clare D.]

Hi, Moses,

These kegs truly are individual-size. I think hers was the 4.5 liter one:

http://www.thekegfactory.com.au/kegtype ... gportkegs/

I have to admit, they're cute as can be, but I just had a nip of my first 20-year-old tawny tonight, and I don't think I can go back to "keg" port now...

Cheers,

Clare

[Derek T.]

if I never add really good port to it, how can I expect what's aging in my cask to turn into really good port?

Clare,

Firstly, welcome to FTLOP and thank you for a very fine question.

I think you absolutely hit the nail on the head with the above statement. There are people in the world who believe that a God turned water into wine. But I have never met anyone who believes that it is possible to turn bad wine into good wine. It just doesn't happen.

Blending your own tawny port in a cask is a fun thing to do, but it is no more than that. You might end up with a nice glass of Port, or you might end up pouring $300 of nice Port into a vat that turns it into vinegar.

My advice is to buy good quality Port to drink and to buy reasonable quality ruby Port to put in a cask and leave for a few years to see what happens. At best, I think you will end up with reasonable quality tawny.

[Roel B]

I agree - pooring filtered, cheap port into your own cask won't make it a better wine. The cask (used wood) almost certainly won't add any complexity, it will only facilitate oxidation. And sure, oxidation could improve the wine in the short term, but no more than simply putting it into a decanter would do - or leaving the bottle open for that matter.

What would be fun however is to buy a few hundred liters of freshly made, unfiltered port (from a vineyard with a good classification of course ) and age it yourself over the next few years, or maybe even decades. It would be fun to experiment with different kinds of wood, cask sizes and amount of exposure to oxygen.

Roel.