Thanks for finally doing a review on ports. I have been waiting a while for this show.
Thanks Gary.
http://www.thewineglass.net

In regard to the 2005 Bordeaux vintage, the following item from the Wine & Spirits magazine indicates why some of us won’t buy first growths (not unlike Jaye’s comment on vintage port). It refers to the 2005 Latour.

“One poignant moment during our tastings was when Michael Broadbent MW, the venerable wine critic realized that he would no longer be on this earth when this wine reached its peak. We promised we would send him our tasting notes in heaven!”

Gary –

What wine do you recommend drinking after your favorite football team takes a 41-0 ass whipping? Just curious, will there be free shipping to Jacksonville until the end of the year?

Go Ravens!

Hey Gary!!

I used to be a huge collector of baseball cards and autographs. I actually just purchased an AMAZING collection. I bought a Mickey Mantle signed baseball, a Joe Dimaggio signed baseball that was thrown out on opening day about 7 ago (not sure exactly when), 2 Mantle signed 8 x 10s, a Joe Dimaggio and Mickey Mantle 8 x 10 signed by BOTH!!! A 8 x 10 signed my Ted Williams and a 8 x 10 signed by 15 of the members of the 500 homerun club. I got these from my Uncle’s best friend….he is a huge collector and bought all of these from an old man who lives upstate…the old man got all the autographs himself ever the years and wanted to get rid of his collection and we are fortunate enought to grab ’em. Sorry to run on a tangent, but I figured you’d like the story. Anyways….GREAT SHOUTOUT TO ROCKY!!!!!! As you can see from my name, I am the biggest Rocky fan in the world. ROCKY is to me what the JETS and wine are to you.

QOD: This follows Jason R’s quetion about buying wine at the wine store that is at room temp. What if the bottles were standing up, and the store was warmer…like temperature in the mid 70s???? Also if the bottles were kept in an area that was under a light, is that also gonna funk up the wine? Please help with these Gary, as I am sure this same situation many people will find themselves in.

HEY – good to beback. Thank you!

I agree that the Dows is usually pretty light. I haven’t tasted Broadbent. I was a bit surprised that you didn’t taste Graham’s. Recently discovered Warre (war-ey)….yum yum yum

G

That last sentence was not grammatically correct…it should read “Please help with these Gary, as I am sure many people will find themselves in the same situation”.

Gary,

3 or 4 questions on Port storage after a bottle has been opened with no answers. Well??? Will it keep or not. I was hoping I could put a nipple on an old vintage port and take small nips off it for months… Any chance of that?

DF

Voting is closed for the VaynerNAMES…over 500 votes! Thanks everyone.
Thanks to Big Billy From Big D for keeping the word out there and getting people to vote!

And the winner is: Wine Librarians with 282 votes.

I went through and cleaned the database as best as possible…there were a lot of fake votes for Vaniacs (over 100), so I pulled them out. I will post T-shirt designs as soon as possible. I will also be setting up a “request” form over at vaynervote.com to see how many people are actually going to be at the party, and interested in having a shirt. Gary…cmon man…when / where????

Thanks again for your votes

B

BTW…if I give the T-Shirts to Gary, he could charge a couple of dollars over cost for the shirts, and then we could give the money to charity. I think this community probably has a real great way to help our larger community…just a thought.

B

Regarding the keeping of Port after opening, the following should help.

“As soon as bottles have been opened, Port is meant to be kept for a limited time only. Young Tawny and modern bottled Ruby, Ruby-Reserve/VC and LBV will stay good for 3 or 4 weeks. They can be closed with their original stopper cork.
For Tawny with indication of age and Colheita the risk of deterioration is less, because these wines also come in contact with oxygen during cask maturing. Sometimes you read about a storage life of months.
Traditionally bottled Port, and especially an older Vintage, may obviously deteriorate already within one day. So a fine vintage Port should be drunk the day it is opened.”

Gary, thanks for reviewing my favorite wines but I don’t know about buying too many new ones as I’m not sure I will last 20 years much less wait that long. Just now drinking 70’s. Do you have any opinion on Ports not from Portugal such as some of the California or Australia Port makers. I love Prager Ports but I know many who say they aren’t real ports so why drink them?

Great episode Gary, I love Port…my wife hates it. So I rarely drink them, I just save them for special occasions. Also, I LOVED your ending, wine is meant to be enjoyed by everyone, not just the successful. It just sucks that most wineries nowadays cater to the rich. It’s sad. I love wine very much, but I hate that side of it.

QOD: I kind of fell into wine. I didn’t know anything about it, didn’t even think I liked it, and I was working two jobs–one as a Pizza Hut shift manager (which I dreaded and didn’t want to even imagine myself staying there) and the other as a telemarketer. The telemarketer thing was just to slowly ween myself out of Pizza Hut before moving onto something else…ANYTHING else. Anyway, a friend of mine was working as a temp person for a wine auction company here in Chicago, that was back in 1997. They needed a full-time warehouse guy, and he told me about the job opening. I applied, told them I knew nothing about wine and walla! Here I am now, still learning, but I’ve come a loooong way. Now I inspect the wine that comes in, rather than shipping it out.

I guess my goal now, is just to enjoy wine with friends. Even though I’m surrounded by fine wine and I get to taste them at tastings, I can’t afford them. So, I’m always looking for that great bargain that doesn’t taste like crap. That’s why I like your show. You weed out the crap for us.

Alright, well, this posted too late on Friday, so it’s lunch time on Monday and I gotta get back to work. I hope nobody is celebrating Columbus day…but instead, if you have it off, I hope you’re celebrating just having a Monday off…three day weekend’s are always great! See you in a couple hours or so…hopefully.

GO BEARS!!!!!–truly the best overall team in the NFL right now. Haven’t been able to say that for a while!
T

Excellent episode. Just what I was waiting for!

So Gary what exactly do you do with all that wine left over from the WLTV episodes?

QOTD: i didn’t like it when i first tasted it….so i was going to drink it until i liked it…what do you know, 10 years later, i like it A LOT!

GV – Great energy on this ep… I’m fearing today’s episode might find you in a less enthusiastic mood, what with the Yanks and Jets showings over the weekend…

QOD – My goal in getting into wine was to give me something to do during a six-month period of unemployment… it worked, and I’m still hooked!

Gary,

Great episode. The first port my wife tried, she did not like. I should have left it there. Now she is a port fiend and we give each other a vintage port almost every year for Christmas. We have several 80 and 85’s in the cooler waiting for them to develop fully.

We had dinner with Bartholomew Broadbent the other evening when he was in town. He is a very interesting gentleman. You should also try his Madeira which also is very interesting. Remember Madeira was the #1 wine in the US until around 1900. Many a US document was written by our forefathers over a glass of Madeira.

We “taste wine” every evening.

Thanks for using the port glass.

Ed R…whats up? Did you really think the show was that bad? I mean cmon..whats wrong with telling what our wine backgrounds are. If someone says it was to get drunk, and now they have evolved into a connoisseur…then so be it. At least people are being honest.

What did you think was wrong with this episode? You REALLY didn’t eloborate.
To say Gary has 25 epsiodes left is a little harsh…even though you thought the episode was bad, doesn’t he deserve a bad showing every now and then?

B

Brandon,
I just thought the QOD was a bit elitist. I’m a blue collar guy who drinks wine for fun just like everyone else here. Just think Gary needs a little criticism to keep things fresh and I was hoping to create a little controversy to wind up the troops, but like Gary’s QOD it went pretty much unnoticed.
For the record I liked the episode and appreciate Gary’s assistance with my increasing wine knowledge and helping me spend my money more wisely.

🙂 Nothin wrong with that I guess

What is wrong with criticism? It happens every episode on WLTV? It isn’t wrong or right 😀 it is just opinion!

What is the most expensive bottle of wine out there?
What is the worst bottle of wine out there at the highest price?

Seth – MacGeek

G- Can you open a port for a long time or is it like other wines that, for the most part, you need to finish in a day?

Gary:

Dude, great episode! One of my favorites. I really enjoy Port, but I didn’t know much about vintage Ports. Wow! You’ve sold me. I need a case NOW!

Just ordered the Dows with free shipping!

B

Just ordered the Dows with free shipping!

B

I’m with TimF on this one. This EP was about as close to perfect as it gets. Loved the Vayner-Puff reference, and the cheese chomp later followed by our friend Nikolai took it over the top. Best of all there were excellent descriptions for great wines Gary. QOTD: Related to your answer on one of the viewer questions, my goal when I started with wines was to taste enough that my palate would serve me reliably and correctly even in blind situations, and also that I would come to know enough about producers and vintages that I would never be intimidated again when picking a bottle from a restaurant list.