Boston Wine Expo 2001 -
Porto Barros Wines

Port is one of my favorite drinks, so we naturally swung by the Porto Barros table as soon as there was space. Porto Barros is a port house in Portugal, and is family owned. We started with the 20 year blended port, which was nutty and rich. This can contain port in it back to 1937.

Hope shows us the ropes

Next we went for the 1987 vintage tawny port, bottled from an oak barrel in 2000. It was rich and smooth, with a slight nutty flavor. The 1977 vintage was also bottled in 2000, and has an even more smooth and rich flavor, now with woody highlights.

We talked with Hope about how both were bottled in 2000. Apparently Barros works on an instant-bottling system, depending on what distributors want. If the US needs 5 more cases of the 1977, they go to the barrels, draw it off, bottle it, and send it over. If they need 10 more cases of the 1983, the same thing happens. This means that a 1977 you buy in 2000 might taste far different than the 1977 you buy in 2010, because the port has now sat in a barrel for 10 extra years. I think it's time to do a comparison!

Winegard NY

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