Standing Upright

[ACmole]

Bit of a strange one....

(This is about Port, so bear with me) I'm very keen on Vintage Madeira and we visit the island virtually every year. The advice about storing Madeira seems to change every year (this year the advice was that once open drink it within 6 months, instead of keeping indefinitely).

I've always been told to keep Vintage Madeira upright, but this time I was told "keep it upright as you would an LBV Port" They went on to say that although VP should be stored lying down, LBV should always be stored upright because of it's "method of production."

Now, I could understand if you kept it standing up because of the short T corks, but because of how it's made?

Anyone else been told this?

Alan

[uncle tom]

Alan,

If you keep stoppered bottles upright for more than a decade, the stoppers begin to decay, and snap off when you try to remove them; so they are best kept horizontal.

Although the producers are experts at making port and madeira, many of them are surprisingly ill-informed when it comes to storing and serving their own products.

They probably only retain reference samples of T-stoppered products for a very limited period after bottling, and may have no experiance of opening one after a couple of decades aging..

Tom

[DRT]

To be fair to these "ill-informed" shippers, without exception they will tell you that all ports with T-corks are bottled for immediate consumption. Storing them for two decades is doing something that the bottling method is not designed for. If you tried to drive a Mini over a peat bog it would hardly be fair to accuse the designer of the Mini for you getting stuck

The question of whether or not T-corks should be used at all is, of course, a completely different question

[Glenn E.]

If you tried to drive a Mini over a peat bog

I'd pay to watch that!