1987 Royal Oporto

We got this half bottle of vintage port from Bevmo sometime in Dec. 2005 and paid $14.99 for it. I recently bought two bottles of 2003 vintage port (Quinta de Vesuvio) after listening to a Grape Radio show about port. We can't drink that for 20 years, so I figured we'd learn something about this stuff in the meantime.

After reading up on vintage port a little bit in wine for dummies, we ran back to Bevmo today to buy a decanter, only to discover that you're supposed to stand the bottle up for at least several hours before decanting. Well, after letting it stand for 5 minutes, we decided it was ready for decanting (it's a smaller bottle, after all).

The cork was much more tricky to remove than the newer wine we're used to, but we managed. Decanting went smoothly....lots of junk was left in the bottle, which we poured into a glass so we could analyze it. Now we're letting the wine sit in the decanter for a few hours...

In the meantime, we did some research into what sort of glasses to use with port and found the glasses we already own that most resemble the correct ones. Basically, the correct port glasses look (to me, anyway) pretty much like white wine glasses.

Color-wise, this stuff is very dark...brownish ruby.

Smells like prune/raisin and smoke and alcohol.

Taste is quite delightful with a long finish. Sweet, thick, and smooth. Tastes chocolatey with raisins. Like raisinettes. Margaret thinks it would go well with a sausage. I'm wondering if we have some blue cheese and walnuts and a cigar (if I were allowed to smoke cigars, which I am not). Yum. We will have to continue this exploration of port.