Colheitas and VP's in the same tasting?

[Mike J. W.]

Does anyone ever mix Colheitas and VP's in the same tasting? If so, would you serve all of the VP's first and then the Colheitas last? Is it a crazy idea?

[Glenn E.]

We do it regularly at Port Club.

Generally, our preference is to serve rubies first from oldest to youngest, then tawnies second from youngest to oldest.

Usually we find that old VPs are softer and gentler, so need to be served before younger ones so that the more boisterous fruits and powerful tannins of the youngsters don't bias our palates.

The same reasoning applies to serving younger tawnies before the older ones. Old tawnies tend to be more powerful and concentrated, so we want to try the younger ones first before our palates get fatigued.

Why rubies before tawnies? Eh... that probably just comes down to group preference. But in general, I do think that tawnies have higher acidity than rubies so it's best to serve them after the rubies.

[John M.]

I've done that at tastings---exactly as Glenn described (he probably suggested same way back when) and was sage advice.

On another note--after a tasting have you ever tried mixing two or three together? Sort of your own crusted? I have with lesser Ports (two that scored in the 80s for instance). The results can be curious but be better....but sometimes nothing better (rarely worse--so why not). I have only done this with rubies.

Back when we did the World Wide Ruby Reserve Tasting thing, we had 7 RRs, I stole a glass full from each bottle and created an 8th Port....it was not the WOTN, but did rather well in the line-up.

[Mike J. W.]

I've done that at tastings---exactly as Glenn described (he probably suggested same way back when) and was sage advice.

On another note--after a tasting have you ever tried mixing two or three together? Sort of your own crusted? I have with lesser Ports (two that scored in the 80s for instance). The results can be curious but be better....but sometimes nothing better (rarely worse--so why not). I have only done this with rubies.

Back when we did the World Wide Ruby Reserve Tasting thing, we had 7 RRs, I stole a glass full from each bottle and created an 8th Port....it was not the WOTN, but did rather well in the line-up.

So the "M" stands for Master Blender?

[Glenn E.]

On another note--after a tasting have you ever tried mixing two or three together? Sort of your own crusted? I have with lesser Ports (two that scored in the 80s for instance). The results can be curious but be better....but sometimes nothing better (rarely worse--so why not). I have only done this with rubies.

LOL... I also do this pretty regularly after Port Club! There are usually leftovers - maybe 1/4 or 1/3 left in half the bottles - so rather than keeping 3-4 bottles on the counter I just mix them. Unless one of the components of the mixture was something that I really didn't care for, I've found that the mix is usually better than the average. It's even sometimes better than any of the components!

I've blended both VP and Colheita this way. I would say that the Colheita blends are usually not as successful as the VP blends (but never bad), but YMMV.

[John M.]

LOL Mike....