For The Love Of Port

Although a wine drinker for 30 years I've seldom drunk port.
I intend correcting that situation and seek expert advice on where to start.
As with wines I'm seeking good QPR for <£20 in the UK. My own undeveloped thoughts are LBV or tawny.
Do any of you afficiandos have tips on which bottles I should start with?
Thanks.

Dear Malcolm,

Welcome to the wonderful world of Port and the FTLOP website's Forum. Please excuse my moving your topic (thread) to this area, called the PORT BASICS Forum, as I believe it will benefit many others looking to learn about Port too.

Have a look in the Forum's VIRTUAL TASTING ROOM and you will find many great examples of Ports that cost less than 20 GBPs. Also included are tasting notes from a variety of posters on all of the wines there. For this reason, that area is a wealth of comparative knowledge.

Also if you scan through the PORT FORUM area, there will be a thread about great QPR or value Ports that might intrigue you as well. Please feel free to let us know which Port you choose and how you like it.

Malcolm

I recently ran a comparative tasting for a group of people at work, who wanted to learn a little about port. We tried 4 bottles from Oddbins, 1 from Tesco and 1 from a wine merchant. Only the last of these cost over £20.

The 4 Oddbins bottles were Smith Woodhouse Ruby, Smith Woodhouse filtered LBV, Quinta do Noval Unfiltered LBV and a Crusted Port (Graham's, I think). Of all of these, the unfiltered Noval 1997 was the hit of the evening. And its big advantage is that because it is unfiltered, it should develop nicely in the bottle over the next 5-10 years.

I posted a thread on the forum of the event, if you want to read about it.

That would be my personal recommendation.

Alex

Malcom,

Welcome to FTLOP, its great to have you here.

Roy and Alex have already given some good advice. Since this site is now just over a year old there is a lot of various tasting notes on almost every major brand (House) and type of port. I also recommend traditional (unfiltered) LBV's. Smith Woodhouse and Warre's makes some of the more easily found and very good ones. Also, 10 year tawny's are also a good start and most should be in your price range.

Don't forget the "lesser ports", like basic tawny's and ruby's. There are some very good ones for not a lot of money. As everyones tastes are a little different I suggest grabbing what ever you can find and give it a go. Obviously, you have some good wine drinking background. But, as I've found out, port is a whole other ball-game. But the best game of my wine drinking life and hopefuly one day it will be yours too.

As for more recommendations. I'll add that Taylor's 2000 LBV was very good, Niepoort's 10 yr tawny, Graham's six-grapes, Quinta do Noval's 10 yr tawny, and if you like your ports more on the dryier side try a Dow's LBV.

What ever you try please report back and let us know if you liked it or not. This is by far the friendlest wine drinking group you will meet.

ON the very first days of this Forum, there was a topic looking pretty much the same.

Take a look!

http://www.fortheloveofport.com/ftlopfo ... c.php?t=15