As you continue on down the path, collecting Port for the rest of your years, how has you cellar changed?
We're intereted in whether you buy more or less Port today than five years ago and for those collecting for longer, how about ten years ago too?
Is there a category of Port in your cellar that seems to have taken on far more prominence than all others? If so, has this always been the case?
Do you notice that your Port collection's contents have morphed dramatically in age, as you've backfilled in recent years ... or is there little change?
Your observations and willingness to share are appreciated and should make for interesting discussions.
Solely quoting stats from CT will be less interesting, but using them in support of your sharing is most welcome if you so choose.
I buy a lot more magnums than I use to and my sweet spot has moved from the 80's to 94-03. I would like to build a stock on 63-70 more than I have. Considering I like a 20 year buffer on opening a vintage, there's not a ton I want to open and even the stuff that is "ready" I want to wait longer on. I end up drinking tawny and LBV more often these days.
I am with Moses that I like at least 20 years on my vintages before opening. I buy more LBVP now because on my age (62) and no heirs to pick up the leftovers. I did buy some 2007s, particularly when in 375 ml. I buy much less now than I did five or ten years ago (combination of age, retirement budget, opening opportunities, etc). I plan on drinking the good stuff for as long as I can and my cellar holds out!
I have been buying alot more port recently, as I have finally decided on a drinking plan. My aim is to have enough bottles to be able to drink 1 a month from the age of 30 to 80. Thats 600 bottles, so far I am 1/6 of the way there. So far i've averaged the purchase of 1 case every 4 months. I haven't been buying older vintages yet as the funds aren't available so i've mainly focused on 1983 to 2003.
Like Alex I'm planning on a bottle of VP a month for the rest of my life, but I have a few years on Alex, so my total is slightly lower. I bought 2007s and will probably buy some or possibly even a lot of the next generally declared vintage, depending on my take on its quality. After that I'm going to start thinking about not buying new releases, or at least smaller amounts given a desire to drink older bottles into retirement. This is all based on VP, which is more than 90% of my cellar. I buy LBVs as cellar defenders and drink them fairly often as I still build the collection. I buy tawnies and colheitas on occasion, but don't really do any planned buying of them.
I think I'm pretty well set on 2007, 2005, 2003, 1997, and 1994. I bought a lot of 2007 and 2003 in the last year. I need a little more 2000, but not too much. So hopefully if finances allow my immediate future buying will be backfilling. It would be nice to buy more from the 1960s and 1970s for drinking while I wait for all of the above to mature.
So if I'm reading this right, most but not all respondents so far feel that they like their VP with some maturity. One question about that, because who the heck am I to argue against drinking 20-100 year old VPs? (that's not the question though)
When you buy 4, 6 or even a case of a particular young bottling and put it aside to age ... do you at least try one early on to get an impression and write down your observations so you can see how it has evolved, many years later and truly learn from that aging curve?
Roy Hersh wrote:When you buy 4, 6 or even a case of a particular young bottling and put it aside to age ... do you at least try one early on to get an impression and write down your observations so you can see how it has evolved, many years later and truly learn from that aging curve?
If I haven't tasted it before, sometimes. I tried one of the 2007 Quinta do Vale Dona Maria Vintage Port that I bought, one 2005 Croft Quinta da Roeda, one 2005 Quinta de Roriz, and one of the 1994 Martinez (which might not count for this question). On the other hand, I have yet to open any of the 2003 or 2007 Noval, nor the 2003 Vesuvio, ... I expect those all need more time and I have other bottles to drink.
I am with Eric. If I have tasted the wine around the time of purchase I will wait a few years to let it develop in the cellar. I strongly believe that successive, periodic tastes as the wines age are the only ones that relate to Your storage conditions and thus make other written reviews (particularly older wines) questionable in their relation to your bottle. If you know the taster has access to well stored bottles, fine, but wines that sound prematurely old could be bad storage (as well as a host of other issues if the reviewer had not owned the wine since release). When I can, I do taste but I usually do it in 5 year increments for my VP (sometimes ten for new ones that are just huge). I like young VP for the power and fruit but much prefer sharing older ones when we have our gatherings for their secondary characteristics and complexities.
Roy Hersh wrote:So if I'm reading this right, most but not all respondents so far feel that they like their VP with some maturity. One question about that, because who the heck am I to argue against drinking 20-100 year old VPs? (that's not the question though)
When you buy 4, 6 or even a case of a particular young bottling and put it aside to age ... do you at least try one early on to get an impression and write down your observations so you can see how it has evolved, many years later and truly learn from that aging curve?
Why open one now? (for me) It would just mean that I would have one less bottle to drink when it gets to be the way I like it.
I can't put together anything coherent that would be of any use to me years down the road. The best I can do is guess what I WILL like when it matures, by following people's TNs that I have agreed with in the past, and noting which wines they think will eventually end up the way I like them: slightly oxidized, with that somewhat astringent, nutty savor.
I really only like VPs that have aged until they are quite like the 20 year tawnies which I like and drink on a day-to-day basis. (It seems to take at least 30 years for a VP to get the way I like it.)
Peter W. Meek wrote:Why open one now? (for me) It would just mean that I would have one less bottle to drink when it gets to be the way I like it.
That's pretty much the way I feel about it, too. I do appreciate tasting young Ports, but if I've bought any it's because I've already tried them (or have heard from people I trust that they're good) and I feel no need to check them again until they're much closer to mature. I might try one at 10-15 years old, but for the most part I intend to keep mine until they're 20-25 years old before I start testing them.
To me, even a relatively weak VP can handle 20 years of bottle age. So why bother opening any of them until that time? They're not going to be ready yet, so it seems like a mostly pointless exercise to me.
I'd be willing to bet that at Roy's 1991 retrospective next month my TNs will be filled with comments like "needs another 10-20 years" or "too young, needs time." I very much doubt that I'll write "over the hill" or "should have drank this sooner" or for that matter, even "this is in its prime right now."
If I get more than 4 in a lot, I will open one to check on the others, both to see where it is on the maturity scale, and to check condition, since they are older bottles.
Glenn E. wrote:
To me, even a relatively weak VP can handle 20 years of bottle age. So why bother opening any of them until that time? They're not going to be ready yet, so it seems like a mostly pointless exercise to me.
It occurs to me that while in a couple of cases I've opened a young bottle just to see where it is at, in other cases I've opened them for a different reason--to see if I should buy more. This happens when I find a bargain, like a 2006 Dow’s Quinta da Senhora da Ribeira for $25, and no tasting notes.
Eric Menchen wrote:It occurs to me that while in a couple of cases I've opened a young bottle just to see where it is at, in other cases I've opened them for a different reason--to see if I should buy more. This happens when I find a bargain, like a 2006 Dow’s Quinta da Senhora da Ribeira for $25, and no tasting notes.
I would buy the Dow at the price and could care less unless I was reading reviews that said it was total trash, which it is not. I hope you took advantage!
I agree that the "target age" for vintage (at least for me) is 15+ years. What I'd find interesting is, do you have the impression that your taste changed over the course of the decades and if yes, do you adapt your "wine buying policies" to that?
When I first started a cellar I was not much into ports. The bulk of my bottles are purchases from 1994 my daughters birth year, of which I have only opened one or two. I keep adding to these when I see good deals. Besides those purchases the bulk of my ports are from 1997 onwards with the majority from 2000 which has the balance of fruit acid and tannins that I like. I like older port, 20+ years, and find that I drink only a bottle or two over the last several years as my wife has given up on VP port so I find myself cracking the LBV's which I have purchased. I am just finishing my '99"s as I find it hard to justify drinking a VP alone. I don't know why as I certainly have enough to do so when I want? So yes my drinking pattern has evolved in port as well as with red wine. All I can say is that my daughter will inherit a lot more port than just her birth year and I will just have to count on her.
Of all the ways to start a wine cellar, I started at the age of 20-with vintage port! This was purely because I was introduced to Taylors 1955 by my brother-in-law in 1972 and I have not looked back. My tastes widened over the years and I have amassed a fairly catholic cellar, but I have always included vintage port and I now have a significant collection going back to 1945. I generally buy "en primeur" to get the best prices and, whilst I trade other parts of my cellar, I do not trade my port. The reason are twofold : firstly, that, together with my vintage madeira, I can only experience opportunities to see how these wines evolve over long periods of time, and secondly, I have not encountered any wine like vintage port which gives such a good price to quality return. Furthermore, I have not experienced ports in decline and I doubt that I ever will, because if your port wines have been stored correctly from the moment of shipment, I believe that they can evolve for very long periods which will survive most of us. There is the added benefit of being able to gift such a cellar to one's children and, I would love to emulate Lord Rosebery of Mentmore whose everyday drinking port, when sold upon his demise in the 70s, was described in the auction catalogue as a 1911 Taylors ! I've personally moved on to 1970 Fonseca, of which I bought much some years ago...
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