For The Love Of Port

Affordability is certainly important when it comes to buying strategies and ability to find and enjoy drinking some older bottlings.

For current bottles of well stored 1963 Warre's, I believe you will be very happy with 3-5 hours of decant time, but look in early to see how it has morphed from the time you poured it into the decanter.

Now it's getting very hard to keep on a when I'm feeling . My six bottles arrived around 4PM today after sitting on the UPS truck in 100+ weather. Three bottles were leaking and all were nowhere close to 55 degrees. I thought I had placed my order late enough to hold it for the weekend but noooo the merchant decided to 2 day ship in 100+ weather both days. They of course were "sorry" but I should have had them hold the shipment. Call it a rookie mistake I guess, but I've had wine shipped for many years and none have done so in extreme heat. So anyway what are the odds for my 2ea. 1963 Warre's, 1970 Fonseca, 1970 Dows? We might need to open a VP tonight

Edit: Being an "insider" I filled out an incident report and received an almost immediate call back from the Customer service manager who offered to exchange the entire lot. While I had hoped my first call would have gotten those results, I can't say I'm not a satisfied customer. So we left it at I'll open a bottle and determine if I should keep them or send them back. WW do?

Since they offered to do so, I would exchange the entire lot. Fine wine should never be shipped in such hot weather. Why take a chance?

Steve Pollack wrote:Since they offered to do so, I would exchange the entire lot. Fine wine should never be shipped in such hot weather. Why take a chance?

+1

Andy Velebil wrote:

Steve Pollack wrote:Since they offered to do so, I would exchange the entire lot. Fine wine should never be shipped in such hot weather. Why take a chance?

+1

+2...a no brainer IMHO

Thanks guys for your help. Everything is taken care of and we will be headed up North this weekend with fresh bottles of soon to be gone Port.

Edward J wrote:Thanks guys for your help. Everything is taken care of and we will be headed up North this weekend with fresh bottles of soon to be gone Port.

Excellent!

Tonight was our celebration of Dad's 81st. Dad had a bit of a surprise for me, the remains of our Cabernet collection. I had lost track of these bottles over the years. For dinner we opened a 1977 BV George's LaTour Cabernet and followed with the 1963 Warre's for desert. I'll be coming home with a 1979 Heitz Martha's Vineyard, '80 Caymus, '86 Berringer PV and unknown year Cabernet port and a few more of questionable drink ability. I'll post a tasting note for the Warre's, but one word came to mind, sublime.

That Heitz Martha's is a stellar wine!

Eric Ifune wrote:That Heitz Martha's is a stellar wine!

I was really surprised to see one left with my cellar mark on it, I had thought they were long gone. The Heitz Martha's was my favorite cab at that time, and back in the day we went through a several mixed year cases. I remember we had the BV and Heitz '68's side by side and Heitz was the clear winner. I hope it shows better than the '77 BV did as it started with funky bottle stink, then opening up in the decanter with a healthy dose of VA. I'm thinking this bottle just tanked as the cork was perfect and properly stored. You could see that this had been very good and several in our group happily drank it, admiring it's tangyness

The 77 BV is OK. The 76 is great. I believe I've a single bottle of each left. Heitz did well in both, but their 78 is fantastic. Both the 68 BV and Martha's are legendary wines.