For The Love Of Port

Dear Roy, and all you Madeira wine lovers out there!
After revising and updating the new producer's chapters are online now, together with new pictures, email-addresses (for direct ordering ) and www-links. Please check them out carefully and notify me of any misspellings, corrections, suggestions.
Thank you and enjoy reading!
Peter
PS: I know that the first picture of the D'Oliveira chapter is missing, it got lost in transfer... :? It'm working on it.

So the missing D'Oliviera picture is now in place, did anybody notice any other mistakes? If so, please leave them here and I will correct them as soon as possible.

Dear Peter,

Thanks for your effort on the superb site you've brought together.

Just a comment. I put a little caveat on your instructions for recorking old wines, the part about using glass balls to eliminate ullage. Great care should be used to use undenatured spirit or methylated spirit containing only completely volatile denaturing (rectifying) agents. Once or twice my training as a pharmacist has come in handy when it comes to wine, and this is one of those occasions, perhaps.

Just in case you can't access my comment, some rectified spirit contains an extremely bitter and nonvolatile compound called Sucrose Octaacetate. Other compounds that may be problemantic are Denatonium (also extremely bitter), crotonaldehyde, and gasoline. If spirits containing these substances, which are foul, bitter, or toxic, are used to sterilize the glass balls, it's possible that the bottle will be ruined and become undrinkable.

So either use undenatured spirits, or spirits containing, say, only methanol (methyl alcohol). In the United States, undenatured industrial alcohol is available in some states under the brand-name Klear-Vue, and I believe this would work admirably for your process.

Thanks John,

i added your very helpful warning about the wrong ingredients in spirits to the chapter about the recorking.
It is people like you, adding professional knowledge, who make these two sites live!

Best
Peter

Peter,

Every chance I get, I make sure to let people know about your fantastic site. The updated material makes it an even more valuable resource and I for one, appreciate all the hard work you put into this labor of love.


Thank you!


Roy

Peter keep your eyes peeled here, as there is about to be something you'll definitely want to see!

By the way, we need more of your members to come over here and post instead of just lurk.