Hello from Surrey
Posted: 20:22 Sat 14 May 2016
I have been having fun making a most enjoyable and interesting personal study of port.
For most of my life I just gratefully accepted glasses of port at appropriate times; some have been great, some awful and most somewhere in-between.
However, a coincidence of events sparked my interest to the extent I decided that when I had the time I would learn more about port.
So far my journey and thirst for knowledge has led me to various web sites, informative books such as 'Port of the Douro' and to the port shelves of most supermarkets/wine merchants.
My first questions were where do I start and with what? Given that my most memorably awful port was a Tawny I have chosen the 'ruby style route' first.
And, because I'm a great believer in the benefits of learning from the 'ground up' and of empirical evidence I started with all the basic ruby ports that I could find.
The more I discover the greater my learning curve seems to become but along the way I have treated myself to the following diversions:- Grahams Malevdos 1984; Quinta De La Rosa 2011; Sandemans Vau Vintage 2003; Cockburns Quinta Dos Canais 1995 and a Cockburns 1963 - until I tasted it my enjoyment of the latter was almost spoilt by my miserable failure to efficiently remove the disintegrating cork.
This introduction has been prompted by wanting to say how much I have enjoyed and learnt from the Forum, thank you.
The discussion on the cellaring of L B Vs is particularly helpful at the moment, not least because I have reached L B Vs on the learning curve and also because I couldn't resist taking advantage of a recent supermarket offering of Taylors LBV 2011 at £7.50/bottle.
And, although it will be sometime before I get into V P's in earnest and also be confident enough to make informed contributions I am stuck on something and need help with the following which, although a minor matter, is very puzzling.
I first tasted Dows Trade Mark and Master Blend special reserves last year and whilst I enjoyed both they were, despite Dows descriptions of the wines being manifestly the same, very different wines.
Having recently revisited them I found each as before and again noticeably different.
Despite researching the matter again I'm unable to see beyond Dows description of the origin of the wines. However, if you take Dows description of Trade Mark as read I would really welcome learning why Master Blend is such a different wine.
Is it just perhaps because they emanate from different Symington vineyards - if so which ones? - and then given manifestly the same descriptions (poor marketing in my view) or perhaps it is a Dows commercial secret and I should just move on?
Thank you in advance to anyone who can help me 'fill in the blanks'.
For most of my life I just gratefully accepted glasses of port at appropriate times; some have been great, some awful and most somewhere in-between.
However, a coincidence of events sparked my interest to the extent I decided that when I had the time I would learn more about port.
So far my journey and thirst for knowledge has led me to various web sites, informative books such as 'Port of the Douro' and to the port shelves of most supermarkets/wine merchants.
My first questions were where do I start and with what? Given that my most memorably awful port was a Tawny I have chosen the 'ruby style route' first.
And, because I'm a great believer in the benefits of learning from the 'ground up' and of empirical evidence I started with all the basic ruby ports that I could find.
The more I discover the greater my learning curve seems to become but along the way I have treated myself to the following diversions:- Grahams Malevdos 1984; Quinta De La Rosa 2011; Sandemans Vau Vintage 2003; Cockburns Quinta Dos Canais 1995 and a Cockburns 1963 - until I tasted it my enjoyment of the latter was almost spoilt by my miserable failure to efficiently remove the disintegrating cork.
This introduction has been prompted by wanting to say how much I have enjoyed and learnt from the Forum, thank you.
The discussion on the cellaring of L B Vs is particularly helpful at the moment, not least because I have reached L B Vs on the learning curve and also because I couldn't resist taking advantage of a recent supermarket offering of Taylors LBV 2011 at £7.50/bottle.
And, although it will be sometime before I get into V P's in earnest and also be confident enough to make informed contributions I am stuck on something and need help with the following which, although a minor matter, is very puzzling.
I first tasted Dows Trade Mark and Master Blend special reserves last year and whilst I enjoyed both they were, despite Dows descriptions of the wines being manifestly the same, very different wines.
Having recently revisited them I found each as before and again noticeably different.
Despite researching the matter again I'm unable to see beyond Dows description of the origin of the wines. However, if you take Dows description of Trade Mark as read I would really welcome learning why Master Blend is such a different wine.
Is it just perhaps because they emanate from different Symington vineyards - if so which ones? - and then given manifestly the same descriptions (poor marketing in my view) or perhaps it is a Dows commercial secret and I should just move on?
Thank you in advance to anyone who can help me 'fill in the blanks'.