Laying down

[Overtired and emotional]

Cruising on another port site (inter honestiores non nominandum) (no, not really), I see that Uncle Tom poses a question about the quantity of port being laid down. He asks, I think, that since business is cash driven above all else, where does that leave stock.

My club has reduced stocks from around 30 to 22 years drinking by sale off of some stock and, presumably smaller purchase of new wine to mature. That move is, presumably, repeated across Clubland; as I have complained before in these columns, college wine cellars appear no longer to be built for the long haul.

So where does that leave private buyers? This month's Decanter port index is 123.6 against 100 in December 1996. Their Claret index is 151.88. Now, we know that Claret prices have shot up, so that the acceleration is at release rather than auction stage. The issue is broadly the same for port, albeit less dramatic.

I recall a well known port expert (inter honestiores non nominandum) shouting me down in print on a well known site (ditto) when I suggested that high release prices would be a problem for the market at large. I was told that port prices were so modest against first growth clarets that my point was a silly one to make.

Well, maybe, but until Russian oligarchs and Chinese nouveaux decide to mix vintage port with their Coca Cola, that's a false comparison. So, we are left with the question of what makes for equilibrium between producer and drinker when, on any civilised basis, you need to cellar port for twenty years before it is mature.

We live in an impatient world, one in which a massive inrease in interest in wine is not matched by a willingness to cellar table wines for ten years, let alone port for twenty and more. So where does that leave the retail matket? In my view, it makes vintage port through the retailer over expensive. It means that serious appreciation of port remains a minority interest. Not, necessarily, a bad thing. Is the minority a small percentage of a growing market which makes the productin of good quality port worthwhile? One hopes so.

[KillerB]

I hope that the producers keep producing at the same quality and keep the prices at a reasonable price. I love the fact that I can afford Port from the Sixties and enjoy it at its peak without having to store it for decades myself.

I suspect that we should buy up now though.

Port and Coke doesn't go and anybody that believes otherwise has no class - that should stop 'em.