For The Love Of Port

On Friday (1/26/2024) 11 of us gathered for a casual evening. Just an array of LBVs, a couple I got in buying ops, the others from local B&Ms--the oldest was 2011 so these were all Fruit Bombs - Lot's of squid ink color. The evening started with pulled pork sandwiches and beers (11.75 lb Pork Shoulder I slow smoked/roasted for 11 hours). Then onto The Show of 6 LBVs. One thing we did just to mix it up was there were 3 tables, each with 2 Ports--3 to 4 people per table. Designed a matrix so after 30 minutes you moved to another table yet you were seated with different mix of people every time--just facilitated better conversation and kept it fresh.

All the Ports showed well. All decanted about 7 hours before. Served Blind. We used an easy "checklist" scoresheet that seems to work with this crew (see pic). Hard to call a WOTN; the Taylor and Ramos Pinto were the weak links and the Broadbent had the highest average score but the Quevedo was also strongly favored--these last two were Buying Oppers so kudos to that! But overall, the scores were close.

The evening ended with bourbons & scotches and great camaraderie.

Nice tasting. And sandwiches too!

Nice post, exciting to read! I will look for the highest score ports to buy too, thanks.

That 2011 Pocas is solid.

I have a working theory that the best value in recent LBVs is not likely to be found among the big boys like TFP. They make good products for sure, but may also be more stingy about keeping the best juice for Vintage. Whereas quality is up across the industry and the smaller producers have more to prove with their LBVs.