For The Love Of Port

Hello All,

I am seeking your advice. I was shopping in a local grocery yesterday (Roseaurs) who have an average wine selection. As many retailer do, they have a smallish cabinet where a dozen or so "special" bottles are displayed. I would be surprised if the cabinet were temperature controlled. Anyway, I discovered in it, a bottle of 1985 Graham V.P. for $63. - which seems a decent price to me.

So should I just forget about it, or should I ask about its history, or maybe someone here knows how Roseaurs treats their wines and can say it is probably worth buying. I have the least confidence in the 'asking' option. Given past history, if I can actually make contact with the official wine person, I will get a 3-4 paragraph answer that will mean in essence 'I don't know.'

This particular store has been in existance for only about 3 years if that matters.

Thanks, Steve Harrison

Steve,

This looks like a good price for what is a very very nice bottle of VP. I would suggest you ask them if thet have any other bottles stored (lying down?) in their store room. Don't buy the one on the shelf - it could have been there for months - but if they have some lying down in a box in the back room it is probably OK to buy and drink.

I would not buy from this shop to keep.

Derek

$63 for this particular wine is a very fair price. That is about what I paid recently for some '85 Grahams in halves from a supermarket local to me.

I felt reasonably confident buying these halves from the supermarket as they all appeared at once and I knew (because I visit there quite often) that they had not been standing on the shelves for a long time.

I bought with confidence as I knew that the supermarket would take the bottles I bought back and give me a complete refund if I returned them unopened and said that I changed my mind after drinking one of them.

If your supermarket will give you a refund if the wine is "bad" - in the same way a UK supermarket would give a refund if the orange juice you bought was "off" - then I would not hesitate to buy the wine for drinking very soon after purchase (once it had settled after the journey home). If they have more than one bottle, then I would suggest you buy all you can on the understanding that if the bottles do not taste the way you expect then you can return the unopened bottles to the supermarket for a refund.

Alex

Rosauer's is a small family-owned chain that has a few locations based in Eastern WA near Spokane, also in Idaho and down by you. I was a consultant on a seafood project and the products were sold to Rosauer's. Their wine program is heavily WA based wines.

The price you mention is great. Look in the Marketplace at an offering I just posted that includes ex-cellars case of '85 Graham's for about $67 per bottle. So the price you see for that bottle could mean that it was purchased a long time ago. If in temp. controlled unit, that is one thing, but at room temp. that would be an issue. There are few deals on "price" here in Washington State, as without State income tax, there is a luxury tax on wine that precludes finding decent pricing, even on local wines.

I buy only a few WA producers these days, but frequently I buy them from CA retailers and have them shipped up here. The shipping costs the same as our sales tax and yet I still save enough money to make it worth the ordeal. This is the grand old scheme of the neo-Prohibitionists that control our liquor laws. Pathertic!

Pass on that bottle unless you'd like to open and drink it this year. I would not cellar it any further. Nonetheless, at that price, you have very little to lose!

Hi All,

I talked to the store manager who called the supplier who assured us that all of their wines are stored in temperature controlled facilities and transportation. And I was glad to discover that the case the bottle was in was also temp. controlled - though it was around 62* - but had only been in the store for a couple of weeks. So if they are telling the whole, unvarnished truth, it seems a pretty safe outfit to buy from.

Also I was working off memory, which is never a good thing for me. It turned out to be a 1983 Graham's VP, and it was for $69, not 63. Anyway I bought it. Now the question is, is there a minimum amount of time it should 'settle down' in my cellar before I open it?

Thanks again,
Steve Harrison

Steve,

Roy briefly mentioned travel shock in the last posting of his thread on extended decanting. The risk to your port is that it is still cloudy from being shaken as you carried it back from the shop.

My advice would be to stand the bottle up in your cellar or a cool, dark cupboard for a week and then open it and decant it. My experience is that a week is usually more than enough for a 20 year old port.

And $69 is still a reasonable price for this wine at retail. It should be a very enjoyable experience.

Alex