For The Love Of Port

Have you ever created a blend at home with a pair of left over Ports or after a tasting, pour them all together into one bottle?

Do you prefer the complexity of the new Port cuvee?

This weekend, I had spent three days evaluating some Port and at the end, I took a 10 year old Tawny and a 20 year old Tawny (leaving the producer out of this) and found that the two combined took the best qualities of each Port and made them better by blending them in nearly equal parts.

Have you ever done some blending in this way or tried someone else's random blending? If so please do discuss.

Not with Port, but I have done this with Madeira. I guess I have more open bottles of Madeira around.
Of course we know about your blend of Colheitas from Kopke!

I've mixed leftover's many a time. Easier than keeping them seperate. Tastes fine, but it would be interesting to try it when they are fresh, not at the end of the night.

I am talking about blending disparate components together rather than an intended blend for a professional bottling.

Yes, on a few occasions after a big tasting or dinner I'll just dump some of the left overs into one bottle for later drinking. Never had one come out bad, then again usually the components are fairly good to start with so that probably accounts for something.

I would have thought that more people would have embraced this when they have some left over Port. Heck, I've seen guys do it with Madeira, Bordeaux and Cali Cabs too.

Roy Hersh wrote: when they have some left over Port

Not quite sure what this means...

I have refilled a glass that wasn't quite empty with port from a different bottle. Sometimes it's a different port, but often it is the same port, but been open for a different length of time.

I've never had a case of "Wish I hadn't done that," so I guess all my port blending experiments have been successful.

OTOH, I've never had a case of, "Wow! That's better than either of the sources," so maybe they haven't been so successful after all.

Roy Hersh wrote:I would have thought that more people would have embraced this when they have some left over Port.

I don't often have multiple bottles open at once, and when I do it is usually because I have two tawnies open at staggered dates so that while one of them goes into its "down" phase after being open 3-4 days I can drink the other one until the first one comes back up at about 10 days.

Daniel R. wrote:

Roy Hersh wrote: when they have some left over Port

Not quite sure what this means...

Daniel,
I got a good chuckle out of your response

Actually, this weekend we had some wines. One bottle was a very hollow red wine. It had tannins, acid and everything, but it was like a hole in the middle, no fruit, no "meat", nothing. I poured just a tiiiiny bit of LBV in the glass, and it turned into a great red wine. I'm sure people would pay big money for such a wine, if they didn't know it was "fake".

Anyway, it's always fun to experiment. I can imagine if you have a way too sweet and fruity port, try to add a bit of a very dry red and see what happens.

Blending different ports sounds interesting, I'll have to try that sometime.

Maybe I should try that with Cab Sauv, which I always (with one exception, an elderly Caymus) feel has a "hole" in the taste spectrum. Even 5% of some other varietal can fill the hole. Why not port?

An old trick of the British wine trade was to add a drop of Port into a glass of over the hill Bordeaux. Freshed it up and made it more drinkable.

Hi

I just joined. I am 61 years old and have been collecting and drinking wines (including ports of course) for 35 years. I routinely open too many table wines, sometimes just to see how they are aging and blend leftovers. It is particularly fun to try to blend out problems (like blending an low acid wine with a high acid one, or a too tannic one with a wuss one, etc) and you need to be careful how much of each you blend, it is not just a dump together process. I do not blend ports because I tend to open only one at a time for small family events. My oldest port is 1977, my oldest maderiea (sorry, did not opt out to check spelling, I know it is wrong) is 1914. My cellar contains mostly vintage and late-bottled vintage ports. I live in the Santa Cruz, CA mountains so I don't make many tastings in Silicon Valley because of the combination of long mountain-road drive and alcohol consumption. I have really enjoyed the comments on this site, glad I joined.


Jim Ryan

Jim,
Welcome to I know what you mean about driving in the SCM's. Although I'm up there a bit less these days due to work, I used to be up there a lot visiting friends of mine that lived on and ran Cinnabar vineyards. It's not an easy place to drive sober, let alone after even one or two drinks. I know we have one member, who's FTLOP staff no less, that lives very close to you and I'm positive we have at least a couple more in the general area. I'm glad you decided to take part in the forum and next time I'm up that way maybe we can meet to share some Port.

Andy

Looking forward to it! I believe you have access to my e-mail address. If not let me know. I am looking forward to my family get together at Easter when I will be opening one of my last 1977 Dow. I will be sure to post my first tasting note describing it. I follow Roy's decanting guide and believe in it completely since I previously thought I had had some bad bottles of Port that did not smell right with only an hour's airing and now I find it was just user error on air-time. Most of my wines are cellared under ground at my mother's so a little warning would be necessary so that I can retrieve whatever we would be drinking. I am the only one of four children that has the wine bug enough to cellar wines. My two brothers enjoy wine but don't buy enough to cellar any. My sister is medically limited from wine.

Jim

Jim,

Will do.

Interesting as I've never tried blended dry wines. Ok, except in labs at wineries when I've experimented with winemakers but that doesn't count. I may have to give this a try next time some people are over and we have a number of wines open on the table.

Andy et All

It is really interesting to do it scientifically by measuring how much of each was blended and to try different mixes, just beware of AIADD (alcohol induced attention deficit disorder).

Have fun

Jim

Jim R. wrote:Andy et All
just beware of AIADD (alcohol induced attention deficit disorder).

No idea what you mean

Blending is fun and you can learn a lot doing it. As Dirk Niepoort said before, 2+2 can be much more than 4.

It seems that you too had nice experiences blending. This is giving me an idea. I'll share it with you latter, let me now develop it a bit more.