For The Love Of Port

That straw will come in useful if I sneak into the Dow 1896 Nebuchadnezzar tasting.

Hey KB, we meet (online) again! 8)

If I make it to that tasting, then you'd better too. T will understand....

Looking back at this topic, I must say that I found it fascinating that, (including ALL types of Port) nearly 60% of the respondents open about 2 cases or less of Port a year.

'Houston, we have a problem.'

And I am not talking about the 60% of the aforementioned folks, but ME ----> <---- me.

Using the mid-points of the ranges, the average person opens 29 bottles. But the average bottle is opened by someone who opens 47 bottles: this person should be the target market of the producers. (And this latter weighting of the average is more appropriate: consider the world’s billions of non-port-drinkers who aren’t relevant to the port producers.)

Almost four cases ain’t so bad.

My answer is NONE.


I drink 2/3 bottles a week. Also drink wine and lots of beer. I'm overweight and good company(so I'm told), and I'm constantly battling to drink less and go out less.

And you want me to have a CELLAR! Its bad enough having a fridge, a pub and a Private Club close by. If I buy a crate of port, it turns into a hellofva weekend. I believe others can store it for me, and I'll just hav to pay the premium.

So now you know, the answers NONE! Alan.

This is a dangerous place. In 2005 I opened 8 bottles of port of which only 3 were vintage. In 2006 I opened 27 bottles of which 10 were vintage. I'm off to a slow start for 2007, only two bottles of port, both vintage so far.

So, I voted 26-50 for 2006

Kris,

You are so right - 3 years ago I would have voted 1-10, in 2005 I would have voted 13-24 - this time I was one of the 2 who picked the highest chosen option

That said, my consumption of dry red wine has taken the opposite journey.

Derek

Kris,

I was in the same boat as you and Derek....until this forum came about. Now my Port drinking has gone off the charts...but I am not one to complain

This is a good time to revisit this thread!!!

And to be fair to the people who were around here years ago or somewhat newbies at the time, I have enabled you to vote again!

Let's have some fun and not only vote, but add some context, whether you joined here yesterday or have been around nearly a decade.

I've tasted 50 ports so far this year and the vast majority are bottles from my holdings including the holdings of the Port Club....the split is 17 of mine---33 clubs.

In general one bottle of Port every weekend, sometimes two....and with friends over, sometimes three.

All in All 50-70 Nice bottles of Port in the year of 2014.

Drinking Port is a great Sport
Allan

For 2014, I have enjoyed somewhere between 40-45 bottles of vintage port. There is still Christmas and the rest of the holidays, so I am hoping to add some more to that total.

The poll won't let me change my earlier vote (from 2007, when I voted 51-75 bottles per year) but my port consumption has settled out since then at a pretty steady 1.5-1.75 bottles per week from my own cellar - this covers consumption at home and bottles I contribute to tastings and offlines. I've been keeping track of what comes out of my cellar each year for some time, and it has been:
2005 - 33 bottles
2006 - 60 bottles
2007 - 67 bottles
2008 - 94 bottles
2009 - 86 bottles
2010 - 79 bottles
2011 - 83 bottles
2012 - 80 bottles
2013 - 92 bottles (of which 44 were from the 1963 vintage, collected over the last 20 years, and opened to celebrate my 50th birthday)
2014 - 78 bottles

So basically Alex, if you didn't buy another bottle of Port for a couple of decades, you'd still be drinking very well!

Roy Hersh wrote:So basically Alex, if you didn't buy another bottle of Port for a couple of decades, you'd still be drinking very well!

If I didn't buy any more port, I wouldn't run out for at least two - perhaps even three - weeks; maybe even a bit longer.

But if I did stop buying port I'd lose my complete Vesuvio vertical and would have to give up drinking the occasional bottle of new release port and while I love the sweetness and complexity of mature vintage port I confess that I do also like the occasional fruit-bomb exuberance of new release vintage port. I have a Vesuvio 2012 lined up for drinking very shortly...

In 2014 I opened 89 bottles of Port from my cellar.

This does not include Port from others cellars or while on trips in Portugal, Washington, etc. It also does not include other dry wines from the Douro, Cali, France, Lebanon, etc.

That vote, at the max allowed, and in reality I am in excess of 200, includes bottles that only get as far as the dining room. I have a couple of temporary storage places in the living area of the house to avoid the need to constantly go down to the cellar. Almost all the Port we drink is Ruby, so storing it in the house for the short time I have it is no problem. I buy week by week or fortnightly. VPs from the cellar are only opened when our son visits. Neither my wife nor I find we obtain the same enjoyment from VPs as we did when we were young but we do enjoy a good measure of Port with our cheeses every night.

Oh, I belong to the quarter of votes

My mother in law (87y.o.) has been visiting. I mentioned this thread and what appeared to me to be the low number of bottles that members drink, including that nobody else had said they open over 100 bottles a year. Her immediate remark was "But that is less than two bottles a week! Surely anybody who drinks Port uses more than that."

We then decided that the difference must be because we drink Port every night at dinner with cheese and biscuits. We further concluded that if we did not drink it at dinner then our annual consumption would be nil because we never have it at any other time. Since neither of us, nor my wife, could possibly contemplate not having cheese and biscuits at some stage each dinner time, our consumption will remain as is.

I have had a couple of lean years on the Port front for a variety of reasons. I do not keep count but reckon that in the past twelve months I will have opened around 20 bottles from my cellar, half of those being on my two trips to Portugal.