For The Love Of Port

No, there were no clues as to what bottle F was. The cork was, if I remember correctly, quite small and completely black with no markings evident at all.

Somewhat belatedly, a report on this fascinating day in Edinburgh in October 2006. This was a long, leisurely Sunday, kindly and generously hosted by Toby Bailey. The main event was a port sleuthing operation, with the ports provided by Linden Wilkie, who writes: In 2004 I went to my first Straker C...

I'm afraid I don't have the luxury of being able to make those decisions. Both the wine I have at home and in storage is only at ambient temperatures.

Sounds like C&B have been very fair with you, David.

I take it you didn't offer them a tenner for the bottles withdrawn from sale, or at least if you did, they rejected it!

Shall we have port as the theme at the next Manchester offline?

As far as I know, there are two styles of neck labels (see this link for examples, somehow I can’t post a picture directly in this thread). As far as I can see the tags aren't disabled, so you can include an image if the image is already on the web somewhere and you have its full URL to insert an i...

Thanks Alex - that's very useful, as I bought a bottle of 63 Noval from BBR in St James' in January.

Of course, it's more expensive than other sources, but I could buy a single bottle, and you've got pretty good provenance.

Well I took my bottle of the Reserva Muito Velha (a 40 yr tawny) to an offline last week. The theme of the offline was small-production wines, so with a back label saying that 1100 bottles of this particular wine had been bottled in 2002, this seemed to fit the bill. This was bottle number 936. (tho...

Thanks - that explains the "40 year" and "more than 40 year" business
(USA rules don't permit "more than 40 years").

Can anyone point to an English list of the age designations for tawny port and their legal meanings? As I understand it, the age where shown is the average age of the constituent wines, as (unlike a Colheita) the wine as sold is a blend of various vintages, blended to produce a wine that matches the...

I've been there too, and tasted those ports, they quoted lower age levels but they were still suspicious... why would someone age the wine that long with associated cost of doing this and not label it as such? I don't believe it. I'm not 100% certain, but I think the IDVP only allows 10, 20, 30 and...

Probably my favourite tawny was the 20 yr old William Pickering port from Berry Brothers & Rudd in London, made for them by Noval (the result of an advantageous deal with Axa just after they took over Noval) and, according to Christian Seely, rather better than Noval's own 20 year tawny. Unfortu...

Roy, the only point I'll take a bit of issue with is "provide the chance for the alcohol to blow off to some degree and also to integrate with more time open". So, leaving a glass or decanter of port out in the open, at room temperature (or worse, for this process, cellar temp) is going t...

I keep some bottles. Special bottles that I'm unlikely to come across again or which mean something. I used to keep corks too, but recently trimmed that down to just a few. But a bottle has to be particularly special to be kept as a bottle, and not just have the label soaked off and put into an albu...

Can anyone tell me anything about Vasconcellos? Two or three years ago, while strolling along the quayside at VNdG I wandered in and avoided a couple of large groups tasting ruby and white port and instead asked the man behind the counter whether they had anything above the basic ruby level availabl...

Good question Alex - I was just wondering the self same thing, as I was reading through other threads. In the UK I think virtually everyone will refer to port, not porto. This probably reflects the British preference to assimilate and anglicise foreign words. (Cf. Hock, Claret, Burgundy etc, though ...

In his recent newsletter, Roy mentioned the Quinta da Pacheca and asked/presumed "never heard of this property?" I waved furiously at the monitor, but didn't get a response, just a warm glow of satisfaction: not only had I heard of Quinta da Pacheca, but I'd also been there and even got in...

You are too kind Roy!

I'll add another vote for Noval 1997 LBV.

So good, that I bought two cases!

Bull & Bear is supposed to the best restaurant in Oporto, but I've still not been. The restaurants on the quayside in Oporto aren't the greatest, although the location makes up. Some are better than others. The best is Don Tonho, which also has a good wine cellar. Lapin is ok and Merceario (I th...