For The Love Of Port

Hi, everyone,

There's something fascinating about exploring the different aromas of ports, isn't there? I recently opened a bottle that promised dried fruit notes, but tasted a little too sweet. That got me thinking, do you think a good balance between sugar and acidity can really change our tasting experience? Personally, I prefer it when it's well balanced, otherwise it leaves a bitter taste. Tell me your tips for avoiding this kind of disappointment, especially when you're spending pennies on a good bottle.
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Just like you, I prefer my Ports to be balanced.

Beside opening the bottle and making your own opinion, here are a few tips, but again nothing is better than going out there, trying and building your own list of producer that you trust for your own palate.

1- Read and relate to the writer. Compare your experience to those of others for the same wine. See among your friends, journalist, writers, online community who seems to have a similar palate than yours. If they don't, try to understand why. The idea here is to understand your palate and other's so you have a clear idea if you'd like this wine base on their comments.

2-Reach out to the online community. You could create a post relating your experiences, the ones you enjoyed, the ones you did not... what you are looking for, budget, style... then based on our experience on suggestion #1, we would make recommandations.

3-Taste and compare. It is very important in my opinion to do tastings with a few wines and a few people. You are learning greatly by comparing yourself to others and by comparing different wines. This will make you better with #1 and #2.

4-Write! Write in a book when you taste. Write your impressions, tastings notes. Don't feel intimidated, we all start somewhere. Come and share online your experiences. People will comment, interact, it will consolidate greatly your memories on each individual tasting and it will make you better at #1,#2 and #3 :)

5- Make mistakes, we normally don't do the same twice. So don't be afraid to be curious. Come and share those mistakes :)

Great advice, Frederick. #3 is especially key. Tasting with others helps you bounce ideas off of each other in real time. Sometimes, I taste something in a Port that I can't put my finger on, but someone else in the tasting will nail it. And vice versa. It also gives you more to think about while you're tasting various Ports together.

So balance is beautiful, I agree. But I have come to appreciate the imbalanced as well---sometimes imbalanced is more interesting. Consider a 20 TWAIOA and a 20 year old Colheita from the same house. The TWAIOA will tend to be smoother, balanced and much like the one you had 10 years ago. The Colheita will likely be more brash and not like the one you had 10 years ago....it is unique. So to me, they are both good and just try to enjoy.