In this episode of 1WineDude TV, I attempt to simplify one of the greatest of cool-weather beverages, Port – and I try to tell you most of what you will ever need to know about Port in under five minutes.  I fail, primarily because I go way over five minutes, but along the way I reveal a simple fact about Port that just might blow your mind, and taste a great (and relatively inexpensive!) introduction to the Ruby Port style.  Enjoy!

Tasted in this episode:

Cockburn’s Special Reserve Port (Porto)
Price: $18
Rating: B

Apparently this long-standing Reserve Ruby Port (Cockburn’s invented the Reserve category in the late 1960s) from this long-standing producer (they’ve been in the Port biz for about 200 years) was revamped recently when Symington Family Estates gobbled up Cockburn’s last year – the grapes are primarily from the Quinta do Canais vineyard in the upper Douro, and the style has been tweaked along with the packaging.  The result is a higher-quality Reserve Port that’s quite true to its Ruby colors: semi-dried fruits like fig and date can be found, along with dark cherries, plums and the “signature” peppery spice that marks a good Ruby. Chocolate notes send the whole thing down the hatch in a fairly well-balanced, elegant, and downright genteel package. A solid buy for cooler evening, post-dinner, fireside-chat action.

Cheers!

So… remember that little bottle of Vin Santo that I lugged back from Castello di Volpaia (with a not-insignificant amount of help from the VinniBag) during my post-Summer vacation in Tuscany?

Well, it remembers you.

Ok, not really – that would be pretty spooky, wouldn’t it?  Like that goldfish in the bowl that was tormenting the kid in that South Park episode.

Anyway, as the weather in the Mid-Atlantic turns towards the cooler side, my vinous thoughts start to move away from Soaves of the world and towards the luscious, viscous, warming spectrum of dessert-style wines. And so I thought that a quick review of the wine that accompanied my long journey back to the States – and a recap of its production from my tour at Volpaia – might serve as an interesting introduction into how the (usually) sweet Tuscan wine Vin Santo is made.

Hang onto your sweet teeth, and let’s take a peek inside this Tuscan attic…

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Wine has often inspired poetry (and still does – check out this example reviewed here a few short years ago), and in today’s case, waxing poetic about the most expensive wines that all of you out there have imbibed in turn inspired me to pull out some of the more expensive sample bottles calling to me in siren song from the bowels of their cardboard box prisons in my basement.

Actually, the first of these isn’t all that expensive, but at over $30 bucks isn’t (at least not by any real-world-with-real-people-spending-real-money-in-it measure) cheap. But it sure drinks like it’s high-end and well-worth the cash.

The second is a famously expensive, high-scoring Napa Cab blend from a producer that got on my good side by quoting Spinal Tap on its website [Editor’s note: quoting Spinal Tap is always welcome, and will get you a smile, but not necessarily a high rating!].

Anyway, to quote Spinal Tap myself, enough of my yappin’ – let’s boogie!…

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Okay… so technically our neighbors didn’t betray us. It just feels that way.

By any conservative measurement, we (my family at “Chateau Dude,” that is) have the greatest neighbors on the face of the planet. Correction: had. Our neighbors are moving away from us, those backstabbers!

Okay… so technically they’re not backstabbers, and we’re just fiercely disappointed that they will be moving to the Midwest, where an impossible-to-pass-up dream job opportunity awaits their primary bread-winner. These are people who we see nearly every day, and enjoy seeing nearly every day. Think about that for a second, and just how rare that situation is in our modern lives. Hell, some people never even see their neighbors or learn their names… And the number of significant disagreements we’ve had as neighbors over the last several years? Just about Zero.

When Stephanie and Natalie moved in next door, I was floored at how cool they were. It got to the point where my wife was tired of hearing about how cool I thought they were. And for a few short weeks initially after the moved in, I deliberately avoided long spans of contact with them so they wouldn’t think I was some weirdo stalker type (I’m weird, just not stalker-weird). Over the years, we’ve shared a lot more than each others’ power tools – there have been dinners, great conversations, big parties, small parties, shoveling driveways after blizzards, and countless beers consumed together on our porches and decks. Most significantly, though, we’ve supported and cheered each other on through the early stages of parenthood, and our kids (who are about the same age) play together often, having so far known each other their entire short little lives.

So when you head out to dinner to celebrate a major life milestone with people like that, what do you pop open to celebrate? Even if they’re betraying you, I mean…

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