For The Love Of Port

I heard creme brulee was awesome with tawnies.

I sold a Dow 40 year old tawny to a buddy of mine yesterday and told him creme brulee was an excellent tag along.

For a 40 year wedding anniversary.

They were ecstatic though.

Hey Todd, Okay, we are trying dark chocolate as we speak with our port. Not going over well. I find myself reaching for the port and avoiding the dark stuff. Sunday night, I know, but we port connsir...connsor...experts say milk chocolate rocks. Maybe we'll search for less than 70% cacao. Man, I wis...

I thought I read somewhere that El Rey was supposed to be an "official" port wine chocolate. They are from Venezuala I believe.

Anyone else read that? Is it good?

So another couple joins us last night and we break out the desserts with our vintage port and included both dark and milk chocolate. Milk chocolate was the heavy favorite, but I understand dark chocolate is supposed to go better with port. I prefer milk. Needless to say, the dark did not go over wel...

Terve Otto!

I am half Finnish myself. My brother lives in Helsinki and can't find good ports. Can you name a few places that he can go to?

Moi moi,

Mark

Wine-searcher.com is the best way, but...

Be careful. Some companies advertise cheap prices, but then hit you on the backend with extra fees for shipping and handling, etc.

You'll end up paying more in some cases.

I prefer them slightly chilled. As in bottles sitting on top of ice, not buried in it.

Goes down nicely.

Blind tastings is the way to go.

And don't let WS & WE ratings influence you. We tried a 90 WS Warre recently and did not like it. We only found out after that it was rated a 90.

How can this be??? General consensus in the room was, keep that bottle away.

Okay, so I plunked down a deposit to reserve a slot in this warehouse to store some of my wine. I am opening frenchwine2u.com as well, so the more storage I need, the better...

Nice looking establishment. Great wine tasting rooms.

Look out...port wine tasting in Southern California coming soon!

My overall experience is that women are at least 50% responsible for port wine sales and just about half the takers when offered. Funny, women have different taste buds than we do. Next time, surprise your guests with a bottle of port, and ask them what they taste without telling them what's in it. ...

Strangely, my distributor who handles these Corte's ran out of the 1991 and 1995. Was everyone on to a good thing???

For me, 1977 brings me back to some samplings I did in the Algarve in 2001. Simply wonderful. I haven't tried many 1970s or 1985s (although I graduated high school that year) but 1977s were truly magnificient.

I just found another place close by that allows wine tastings in Laguna Hills. They have several rooms that are being built as we speak.

One day, I'll do a roll-call here to see who lives close by and maybe host a port wine tasting.

This has probably been tossed around on FTLOP a few times, but what the heck... I tried a Pedroncelli recently and really dug it. I think it was a 2002 vintage. I'm a sucker for hints of caramel and this one really stuck to me. Others in the party really liked it too and were astounded that it was a...

Dow's 20 year tawny. I got a few extra in stock and am thinking of using it for giftbaskets for the holidays.

So, naturally, we have to "test" these darn ports.

Arm twisting...

We sell the 2000. Not a hot seller, but gets quite the high rating, between 92-94 points (WS).

I am also curious if anyone has tried this one.

Wow. At first, I thought these were 375ml bottles for that price.

How do they stay in business? My distributors charge more than that for each bottle. Maybe they can import directly from Portugal? That license can't be cheap.

We sell it for $69.99 and it scored 90 points by Robert Parker. I tend to like some other Smith Woodhouse ports but admit not having tried this one. Its not a super seller, by any means. So far, no complaints by our customers though. Interesting responses from you guys. Makes me wonder if I need to ...

Porto Rocha Vintage 1977. In Portugal. Years ago when visiting Lagos, Portugal, I spoke to a lady behind a desk in a wine store and asked her about port. She said 1977 and 1994 were the best years. I know I didn't pay much for mine - but that was when my first love for port was born. BTW, Lagos is b...

Thanks, Marc. Yeah, we get a lot of requests for port wine tastings. Believe me, I'd love nothing more than to have a wide variety of ports to sample with cheeses and desserts to offer our members and customers. There are many I still need to try myself. What better excuse to do it? There is a compa...