ThePortForum.com

My only issue with the butler's thief type - which the Durand is a composite version of - is that it often trashes the branding on the cork, which can be critical on old port bottles.

The Durand's patents are due to run out in about six years time - I expect some cheaper versions will then emerge..

I think that is literally what it is: only basic whites, rubies and tawnies are excluded from the definition. Curiously, in the UK it is almost impossible to buy these since even the standard supermarket Ports are reserve versions. But of course the target market for them is France, Portugal, Belgi...

I don't often buy corkscrews - they are sometimes gifted to me, sometimes part of mixed auction lots, but I did buy one recently, not because I needed it, but because ever since the plastic on the foil cutter that came with my existing one snapped suddenly, I have been fearful of the same happening ...

I don't think the price is that ridiculous to be fair.

The going rate for port miniatures is around the £1.50 mark, add the neat packaging and maybe 24 would retail for £49.95 - I doubt many people will think £84.95 a bargain..

Lovely idea, but the price is off the scale..

However this most likely won’t be the case any longer. With the current massive reductions in volume being made there won’t be the large supply available 20+ years from now. So while currently you can get 20-30 year old VP for the same price as current releases, I don’t see that continuing going fo...

the issue I'm facing now is whether it's worth money now to buy individual bottles of the newest vintages at retail when the 1990s vintages at retail sell for sometimes half the price of the 2016s. This is a weird thing that goes back about forty years now. VP at release goes either nowhere in pric...

There's currently a number of VPs from my birth year ('94) that I might want to pick up as a horizontal tasting for a special occasion in the future. If only I had started buying port in volume when I was 26.. :roll: - although I suppose, buying a house was a bit more important then.. Beware of kee...

Are there any good reference posts that discuss the stylistic differences between brands under the same owners? Obviously, single quintas will have their unique stylings, but what are the general brand differences between Symington's four big names (and its smaller names, like Smith Woodhouse or Go...

Has anyone bought what was intended to be a cellar defender then gotten them home, opened one and then went, “Shoot, this is way better than I thought and too young to drink right now.”? 12 years ago I picked up a half case of Quarles Harris '77 very cheaply, with casual quaffing in mind - I soon r...

I have never seen or heard of a modern vintage unfiltered Graham’s LBV Neither have I, but I do think they ought to bottle one. Maybe not bottle matured like the Warre, but supplied with a proper driven cork. be quite disappointed if I accidentally got the unfiltered version! I only found out about...

Really? Graham LBV is a clear mass-market opponent to Taylor and Warre Bottle Matured LBV addressing a completely different market, predominantly against "Portuguese" brands. Dow LBV is very low volume and sold through high-end retailers and doesn't really compete with the other two. Seems quite st...

I believe that they Symingtons consider Dow, Graham, and Warre to all be co-equals, perhaps also including Cockburn. It's the market that used to focus more on Dow but is now focusing more on Graham. In casual conversation, it is not hard to detect that some scions of the Symington clan have a spec...

I'm even getting to the point that I feel like quality unfiltered LBV needs 20 years of age. I agree. A few LBVs are made with rubbish juice that really shouldn't pass the IVDP, and some are over-filtered/fined. From the producers that take the style seriously, most should be drunk between 20 and 4...

but next year the 2000 vintage becomes "ready for drinking" so can't really been regarded as cellar defenders I'm running three years behind you. I will start 'exploratory' trials of the '97 vintage next year, with stashes of Dow and Niepoort lined up ready for sampling. At the same time the '91 vi...

The nearest weather data available online that I can find comes from Vila Real, which is always a few degrees cooler than the Douro valley as it's quite high up, but it nevertheless gives an indication of what's going on - usually! But there's no suggestion of above average temperatures in the secon...

I use CellarTracker to track what location they are at. Whilst I find CellarTracker a very useful resource when I want to find out, in ball park terms, what most people think of a widely marketed wine; I've never uploaded my stock inventory to it, or played with its less obvious tools. Aside from r...

I am lucky enough to have a proper cellar underneath my house, so unlike many people here, do not have the imperative to split cases between a home wine fridge and a remote storage facility. However for a few years now I've been doing this for unfortified wines, partly to maintain a wider range at h...

I wonder how many of those other producers were making “Vintage Character” Ports? I'm not at all sure when the term 'Vintage Character' was first used. I am preserving a couple of good examples in the interests of posterity, since 99.9+% of it has now been drunk. That said, I'm not sure I've ever s...

I think I am right in saying that Taylor’s LBV was invented As far as I can make out, the only thing Taylor invented was the idea of using a T-stopper on a premium quality ruby port. Everything else had been done before. However the mass marketing of the product did cause some upset at the time. Ot...

cloying

Each to his own, but my interpretation of the word 'cloying' is an excess of sugar that has no integration in the wine. It is very much a characteristic of young tawnies rather than aged ones, and another reason why I prefer to drink them matured.

The producers have to work within the constraints presented to them. They can't make a mellow wine, as that is only achieved through bottle aging, and they also know that there is no consumer tradition of laying down tawnies to mature. As a consequence, it doesn't do their sales much good if they sh...

Do you find much changes in those 10 year old tawnies when they’ve spend a decade in bottle? Standard tawnies don't go south after a decade in bottle, but they only mellow to a moderate degree. Rich reserve tawnies, like the Quevedo, are very raw when first bottled, yet bottle age quite quickly, be...

do you ever drink any Port that hasn't spent some serious time aging in a bottle?!

Very rarely these days. Around 98% of my port consumption is aged wine with an overall average of somewhere between 25 and 30 years bottle age.

As I'm drinking far more at home this year, and far less socially, my normal allocations for home drinking are being stretched. I have a spreadsheet to ration my allocations of VP and LBV, and as infill, am drinking some ten yr old half bottles of Quevedo reserve tawny, which is now very nicely smoo...