Couture has a bargain! I’m dumb-struck

The local ‘priced like Harrods’ shop in our development had this at a very reasonable price. I think a bottle of port is a hilarious thing to be drinking of an afternoon.

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Vintage Port 1997, Dow’s

An explosive nose of powerful fruit which has a hint of softness from age. It is a rich, heady, expressive nose with fruit cake characters and a real booze-licious whack. But that is what you want with Port. It is really quite sweet with lots of ripe fruit on the palate. More of that fruit cake here. The tannins are huge and incredibly ripe, so this seems balanced despite its excess. This is a bounteous, buxom wine which we are drinking a bit young. Young it may be but it is one hell of a lot of fun (see theory below).

So, my theory about big new world wines: If you like these 14.5%+ Australian Shirazes and Californian Zinfandels you should really be drinking Port. That style of wine is all about excessive fruit, alcohol and often tannin. If you like this then Port will provide you much more of the same. If you grab them young they are great entities of excessive intensity and I’d argue that they are more fun than the Shirazes and Zinfandels because they go up to eleven.

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