Old Ports Never Die

Like many of the posts on this blog, “Dead or Alive” had gotten too long. It started in 2018 and by the end of 2023 consisted of over 30 pages of very detailed tasting notes that I’ve found impossible to index within the confines of my website. I will be setting up a “Dead or Alive 2024” soon but will leave this account of an old port in a stand alone post. Right now, I do not have my higher resolution tablet which my friend, Durk Piersma, has repaired, so I’m using my cheap phone-camera for the illustrations. Durk also convinced me to enter the 21st century and buy a better phone that takes ultra high resolution pictures. So, as soon as we have that set up, you’ll see much better graphics on this website. Meanwhile, here is a post about an old port and the story behind it.

TASTED 1/10/2024

Last night was our ZOOM tasting group and the topic was fortified wine. We have a lot of fortified wines, as I mentioned earlier in “More Great Wines” which are mostly souvenirs from various tasting rooms purchased with a clear notion of who and when we would drink them, but never did. But, for our ZOOM group, I thought it would be best to stick to the tried and true such as Porto, Sherry or Madeira. As I was digging around and finding no Vintage Porto older than 2007 (this is good because it indicates that we are actually drinking up some of the older wines) the memory of a wine fishing* expedition along the Thornapple we engaged in quite some time ago. I found the six pack of commemorative Australian wild flower labeled bottles which all contained 1980 Karrawirra Premiun “Old Klaubers Vineyard” Vintage Port, South Australia (no abv listed) today’s value $400 six pack. Though I do remember giving some away, I don’t think we ever drank any of it previously. I was expecting something in the way of a very pale tawny but wasn’t certain, so I decanted it, just in case it was “vintage port” style. It was neither. Remarkably, the color was still black as ink with red and purple highlights and not even a smidgen of translucent brown on the edges. It looked like a 10-12 year old vintage Porto. Oddly, for a heavily pigmented 43 year old wine, it had no sediment! The cork was just a small plug still intact as I removed it with an AH-SO puller. The nose was all port. And, a still youthful port at that! Initially, waft after waft of gorgeously rich pure fruit cascades through one’s nostrils until at the very very end of a long breath one gets an invigoratingly pleasant whiff of something resembling kirshwasser or grappa. The flavor is so amazingly fruity, that one even thinks of apricots and Moscato as the velvety smooth liquid cleanses one’s palate. It is alive and well and maybe never better than now.

*In case you haven’t heard this story, it starts with a friend of a friend who doesn’t drink and was trying to sell his house which included a 700 bottle stocked wine cellar. The cellar was one of the best hermetically insulated, passive quarry tile on subterranean concrete I’ve ever seen. Perhaps the only thing comparable I’d ever seen was a cellar full of wines in France owned by our late friend Robert Mayberry in a tunnel which connected a rectory where he lived to the stables. Come to think of it, another late friend, Tom Frank had a similar set up in a tunnel which connected his basement to his garage back when he lived on Walnut Lake. I mention this, because, regardless of the quality of the wine itself, the storage conditions were absolutely ideal. Anyway, my friend’s friend brought a list of his wines to Kameel at Martha’s Vineyard hoping to sell him the entire collection. Kameel took one look at the list and explained that he had no interest in becoming involved in or being liable for what he referred to as “toxic waste”! But, Kameel also knew that Mr. Never-met-a-wine-too-old-to-drink (me) might have an interest. As I said, the owner of the cellar, did not drink and had purchased the house with the wines left there from the previous owner. He knew nothing about wine, but did know a few brands and terms that sounded to him like some of the wine might have value. He mentioned “vertical collection of Caymus”, “first growths”, “vintage Port” and so on. So, I was curious and told him I would take a few samples, taste them and make him an offer. Well, the “Caymus” was actually “Caymus Cuvee” (the forerunner of Liberty School from the 1980’s), the “first growths” (few and only from the least promising, early maturing older vintages), “vintage” port (forty year old LBV’s the color of light tea), Kosher California Cabernets that had long since seen better days, along with 500-600 bottles of mostly generic German and Hungarian wines from Pieroth and other bulk processors. I took a few samples and everything was so weak and tired to be of no interest to me except the German wines which appeared to be quite good. Unfortunately, neither Alice nor I drink much sweet wine anymore. So I told the owner of the cellar that I was not interested. By that time, he was desperate to close on the sale of his house and one of the conditions of sale was that the wine must be hauled away. So he made me an offer. If I would haul it away, I could have all of the wine for free unless I sold it for a tidy sum then it was up to me to share the profit with him. How could I refuse? Alice and I arrived at his house along the Thornapple River and started boxing up wines and hauling them out of the basement cellar to the car. It was obvious that there was no way I was going to get 60+ cases boxed up in our mid-sized car. I think the most I had ever gotten into a comparable sized car was 40 cases of empty bottles I had picked up at Fenn Valley in my old Saab when I was making wine commercially at Rogue River Winery in Rockford. So, instead of boxing up the wine, we simply nested all the wine on the floor of the trunk and back seat head to foot until the entire trunk was completely full (no boxes) and the back seat filled (loose bottles, again) over the window sills. We put the last couple of layers in through the partially open windows. Under Alice’s feet and on her lap were the ceremonial wooden crates full of old ports, sherries and a commemorative bottle of “Always Elvis” from the 1970’s. Yes, it is the contents of one of those boxes that we enjoyed last night. As it turns out, all of the Cabernet, Bordeaux and “vintage” port was extremely tired with some being drinkable but most found their way to the kitchen sink. But, the generic German and Hungarian wines, mostly from the early 1980’s with a handful from the 70’s, 60’s, 50’s and even 40’s were all good! Not just good, but GREAT! As I said earlier, we don’t drink much of that type of wine so we gave the majority of it away but still have a couple dozen in the cellar. If there is a moral to the story, it might be “never underestimate the tenacity of Germans”.

Enjoy in Good Health,

A Brian Cain, the Michigan Vintner