ThePortForum.com

Something that bothers me is how often you hear or read things about Port that seem completely far-fetched but which may have a kernel of truth at their heart which is difficult to discern. This is made worse by the frequency with which you end up reading completely far-fetched things about Port that turn out to be, well, entirely untrue.

For example, I remember being told on a tour in Gaia many years ago that some producers mixed white ports into their tawny blends in order to artificially age them by giving them a lighter colour. For many years, I completely discredited this but have recently come to understand that some producers might use some aged white port in their blends, perhaps not so much as to make their 10-year-old tawnies look might lighter than they would be when made out of red port but, instead, as components for the older and more complex wines.

I wonder if we could examine any others that crop up in this thread?

One that recently occurred to me was when I was discussing Douro table wines and Port with a representative of one of the independent quintas, she said that it was important to store and age bottles lying down (fair enough) but that also, it was helpful to rotate them periodically, so that as the sediment threw itself out of the wine, it did so evenly throughout the liquid in the bottle. She suggested that otherwise some of the wine would age more quickly and some of it would age more slowly and that this would be a bad thing with, particularly, the first glass of a bottle being not as good as the last if you did not decant it. I’ve never heard anything like this and assumed that conventional wisdom was to try to leave the wine undisturbed (hence the white dash applied to many bottles of VP by more traditionally-minded producers). I also doubted that a bottle of wine is large enough that the liquid would age unevenly, or that you could successful pour the liquid out without recombining it. I guess if you are ageing wine in a 10,000l barrel slightly different considerations might apply. But is there some truth here that I am missing?

JacobH wrote: ↑10:04 Mon 28 Jun 2021 For example, I remember being told on a tour in Gaia many years ago that some producers mixed white ports into their tawny blends in order to artificially age them by giving them a lighter colour. For many years, I completely discredited this but have recently come to understand that some producers might use some aged white port in their blends, perhaps not so much as to make their 10-year-old tawnies look might lighter than they would be when made out of red port but, instead, as components for the older and more complex wines.

Or as is sometimes the case at older/smaller producers, the white grapes are just part of the field blend.

The one that annoys me all the time because it's really simple to disprove, is that TWAIOA either average that old, or that's the age of the youngest wine in the bottle, or some other standard that comes from some other alcohol is stated as fact for Tawnies.

The number on the label only represents a profile of organoleptic qualities. It technically has nothing to do with the actual age of the wine.

Glenn E. wrote: ↑18:58 Mon 28 Jun 2021The one that annoys me all the time because it's really simple to disprove, is that TWAIOA either average that old, or that's the age of the youngest wine in the bottle, or some other standard that comes from some other alcohol is stated as fact for Tawnies.

The number on the label only represents a profile of organoleptic qualities. It technically has nothing to do with the actual age of the wine.

I have some sympathy from the complaint by another ’er (Tom, perhaps?) that the regulation for aged tawnies does not comply with most European consumer protection laws. I also think most consumers think it means something different, especially since in other markets, an age statement refers to the youngest liquid in the bottle. Scotch is a good example of this.

The rules for MWAIOA are similarly faulty. It cannot be right that you can call something a '50 year old varietal wine' that is one demijohn of 1870 varietal wine, two demijohns of 50 year old tinta negra, and a barrel of 15 year old varietal wine. It may be legal, but it's a disgrace, and a stain on the good name of madeira wine.

Unfortunately as the category of aged Tawnies grows and delivers both more sales and value to producers, it will most likely lead to more bottlings that try to deliver an aged profile rather than have a genuine average age that relates to the indication.

winesecretary wrote: ↑21:56 Mon 28 Jun 2021 The rules for MWAIOA are similarly faulty. It cannot be right that you can call something a '50 year old varietal wine' that is one demijohn of 1870 varietal wine, two demijohns of 50 year old tinta negra, and a barrel of 15 year old varietal wine. It may be legal, but it's a disgrace, and a stain on the good name of madeira wine.

Hmm... I thought that Madeira's regulations were the same as Scotch. If it says "50 years old" on the label, everything in the bottle must be at least 50 years old. Is that not true?

I know that Madeira's solera regulations are much more strict that, say, Rum's.

@ Glenn - In madeira "X year old' regs are (now) the same as port. I think they used to be different when it was just 3, 5 and 10 years old and frasqueira that were allowed, but either that they were changed or the understanding of what was allowed changed. Which is why there has been an explosion in the offerings now that you can have 20/30/40/50 year old blends. With a few exceptions, they are not worth the paper the labels are written on. The colheita category on the other hand has some really interesting wines. Solera was a banned term from EU accession until fairly recently. Rules are, as you note, strict.

Whilst the IVDP has never been entirely reluctant to sort out labelling problems (e.g. abolishing “Vintage Character”), I think the problem with Tawny Ports is that the blending process doesn’t really lend itself to “minimum age”. For example, when we did the Quevedo “blend your own tawny”, I remember it included wines from 1997, 2003 (so 18 years old) and the 1970s. The 2003 component tasted and looked far more “aged” than the 1997 due to its maturation process. No doubt Quevedo could probably find something to swap out the 2003 component if necessary for the next couple of years, but I presume similar modifications would be required all over the industry. And that is before we try to work out the age of barrels that have been topped up or refreshed. I guess “minimum average age” would be easier to achieve.

Incidentally, I’ve been trying to work out when 10, 20, 30 and 40 YO became the standard categories for tawny Ports. I am pretty sure I have seen bottles going back the mid-20th Century but I get the impression that until the 1970s they tended to be sold with descriptions (e.g. “very old”), particularly when shipped by the pipe. I think there is something to be said for a descriptive system. For example, with Cognac, whilst the categories have minimum age requirements these are really quite low (VS is 2, VSOP is 4 and XO was, I think, 6 but is now 10) so the focus more on the subjective impression of the spirit. Although it would never happen, I wonder if it would be fairer for tawnies to be categorised in similar ways so the focus would be on the Port’s reputation rather than a misguided impression of the regulations?

JacobH wrote: ↑09:42 Tue 29 Jun 2021
Incidentally, I’ve been trying to work out when 10, 20, 30 and 40 YO became the standard categories for tawny Ports. I am pretty sure I have seen bottles going back the mid-20th Century but I get the impression that until the 1970s they tended to be sold with descriptions (e.g. “very old”), particularly when shipped by the pipe...

Some circumstantial evidence from my cellar...

20YO was definitely in use in 1968.
AHB was of the opinion that the Cabral dates from the 1960s?

I'll try to check my older tawnies later, to see if any of them has indication of age.

I have a Dow 40yr old bottled in 1969; would have to check photos to see what older I might be able to provide evidence for, but I only log the VPs so that might take a while.

Checked my old tawnies, from the 30's and 40's. No indication of age. But this is just anecdotal evidence.

I have some sympathy from the complaint by another ’er (Tom, perhaps?) that the regulation for aged tawnies does not comply with most European consumer protection laws. I also think most consumers think it means something different, especially since in other markets, an age statement refers to the youngest liquid in the bottle. Scotch is a good example of this.

The original British Trade Descriptions Act - plainly worded, and easy to understand; was clearly at odds with the IVDP's rules on TWAIOA. Advertising a product as being older than it actually is was specifically outlawed under that Act. For a port to have the character of a 40yr old, whilst actually being somewhat younger, would not have been acceptable.

However that simple Act of Parliament got largely replaced by EU 'Unfair trading' regulations, of such complexity, (and copied verbatim into British law following Brexit); it is hard to work out what is and isn't legal now.

As for other myths, the one that stands out is the often repeated idea that a bottle of vintage, once decanted, should be consumed the same day. This is something that must deter some people from decanting a bottle, yet is patently false, especially on younger wines.

I want to pick up on Tom’s last comment.

It is often stated that a bottle of Vintage Port must be drunk within a day or two once opened.

I regularly take 4-5 days to consume a bottle of Vintage Port of anything from 2 to 60 years of age. While it might be at its most impressive on days 2 and 3, it is in no way unenjoyable on days 4 and 5.

The odd thing about decanting times is that you see nonsense talked in both directions. For example, on one cellar tour in Porto, the chap told the group that a ruby Port would keep for six months when opened! Clearly it would still be drinkable after that time but I can’t imagine it would be very nice...

As a related point to anxieties about finishing a bottle, I do think the Port industry misses a trick with placing so much emphasis on 75cl bottles of Vintage Port. I’m sure that very few people drink Port like we do and much of it get consumed as a digestif with most people having a single glass in the region of 7.5cl to 10cl. For those purposes half bottles seem like a much more useful size and much less likely to suffer from the “it’s a bit late to open that” syndrome.

I also notice that the vermouth industry is getting a message out that it is a very good idea to put the opened bottle in the fridge: I wish the Port industry could do the same, especially with restaurants.

Hmm. Yes. Half bottles also have the gift/curse of evolving much faster (the opposite of magnum and above).
But I agree that it should be more of a common thing.

Half bottles seem a bit small for my liking. They also tend to ullage too much before reaching maturity.

Bottles can also be too small - at tasting events and informal get-togethers, they can vanish too fast, whilst magnums can be a bit OTT

Instead of 375mL vs 750mL vs 1500ml, why not have two compromise sizes? 568ml and 1136ml - aka Pint and Quart..?

Hell no

Hell no

Just because nasty old Napoloen forced French weights and measures on everyone on the continent two centures ago, doesn't mean you can't embrace the old ways when it makes sense.

Think about the headache of whether a case is 6 or 12 bottles? A wooden case of 12 x 750ml tends to come in at a little over 20Kg (44lb), which falls foul of many employers manual handling weight limits, so cases of six are often sold now, even though it increases the packaging cost.

If you had cases of 12 Pint bottles or 6 Quarts, the case weights would be perfect and everyone could standardise around that.

uncle tom wrote: ↑13:45 Tue 06 Jul 2021 when it makes sense.

Which is never.

As much as I am far more familiar with (American) pints, quarts, and gallons, the metric system makes far more sense. I wish the US had forced the issue and changed everything back in the 1970s rather than simply allowing metric measurements, because by now we'd all be perfectly fluent and it would seem normal. But instead we still fumble along using 2 incompatible systems.

A 750ml bottle is the wrong size. It doesn't portion easily. A standard bottle of wine should be 1L. If it must be smaller, then 800ml. Make bottles' sizes divisible by proper pours for wine (200ml) and Port (100 ml).

Why do we use 750ml? Because it's derived from a fifth which is 757ml. I.e. wrong bottle sizes, even in metric, are because of Imperial standards.

200ml seems quite a lot for a glass of wine! In the UK they can only sell them in 125ml or 175ml glasses and I think 100ml, 120ml and 150ml are the most common sizes in continental Europe. (Places do advertise 175ml as the "small" and 250ml as the "large" but the latter is really a double so they'd have to sell a 125ml at half its price if anyone asks.)

I'm with you about the size of the glasses of Port though. The two main reasons I almost never order it by the glass is that a) the size offered is so often a ridiculous 50ml and b) you never quite know how long the bottle has been opened.

The worst thing about volumes in the UK, though, is the creeping use of American fluid ounce units as a result of the second and third wave coffee shops. That means we have at least three systems on the go: you see prices for beer and milk in a Imperial thirds, halves or pints; wines in merit; and sometimes other drinks in fl oz...

(As an aside, I also like to use gills for making cocktails but I appreciate that puts me in a minority and I can also see a lot of sense in the Amercian system where 1 shot = 1 fl oz, unlike the merit 25/35ml or the 1/5 or 1/6 gill of pre-metric UK).

Which is never.

Glenn,

The amusing bit about this debate is that whichever way you look at it, a revert to British Imperial measure makes the most sense - by chance, rather than design or contrivance admittedly, but it works best.

We only use base ten for our numeration because that's the number of fingers and thumbs we have - if we had an extra digit we'd probably be using base 12 and find dividing by three a lot easier. Thailand, I believe, only used base two until about 120 years ago.

Most ancestral measures of weight and measure used binary multiples - as do the fundamentals of computers of course - and dividing by half and half again is often more practical at a human everyday level.

Fifty years ago, the decimalisation of the British currency was sold on the pretext that 'computers couldn't handle the old system' - it wasn't true then and it certainly isn't true today. The metric orthodoxy - which the US has stood up to with great credit - simply isn't necessary today.

Everyone today can work in the units their forefathers bequeathed them, and let the technology instantly make the conversion when dealing with other lands - there is no need for oppressive uniformity, and certainly not la paix Francaise

There are two separate questions here.

How dense should the measures be? Apart by a factor of 2? By a factor of √2 ≈ 1.4142? By ∜2 ≈ 1.1892? But the more measures there are, the more different wine-rack sizes are needed. Hence I want fewer measures: a factor of 2 seems sensible. Maybe, at most, φ ≡ ½(√5+1) ≈ 1.618.

Then what is the base measure? A pint? A litre? three-quarter of a litre? I care less.

There is a more fundamental measure, which is highly personal. What is, for you, a decent mouthful? How many decent mouthfuls do you want of one wine? That is the perfect size of bottle, if drinking alone.

winesecretary wrote: ↑00:21 Wed 07 Jul 2021 There is a more fundamental measure, which is highly personal. What is, for you, a decent mouthful? How many decent mouthfuls do you want of one wine? That is the perfect size of bottle, if drinking alone.

It seems to me that Riedel is missing a trick. Not only could they market glasses specially designed for every grape variety under the sun, they could also offer a bespoke range where the glass is then scaled to 𝑥 × your personal mouthful size, so you never have an unsatisfying small amount left in the glass when you finish. Perhaps I should patent this idea and see if I can flog it to them?