Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another edition of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. We're happy to see you. I am your host, Kristin, with me as always is Pat. Sup. Hey, you know you can't see them, right? See what? And Roger. Hey, how are ya? I'm good, I'm good. Happy to be with you today, Rog, and Greg. Hey. We have a special guest, Bill Newton, our buyer. Hey, Bill. Hello, everybody. So you take care of buying what categories for us here at Binny's? Well, it's kind of a laundry list, but if you take out all the glamour categories, I have everything else. So you're saying you buy the ugly wines? I buy the ugly wines, but there's a lot of good stuff in there too. So hidden gems, hidden gems, Austria, ugly ducklings. Yep. Buying German wine seems pretty cool. I think you're really interested in that. You seem to be very into it. It's really cool. Actually, that would make a great, a great podcast sometime for sure. Yeah. Germany, Austria. There's a lot of really good stuff. World class wines for not much money. Right, right. That's good. We're all about the value here. You have some of the esoterica to which I love. I do. Madeira. Madeira and Port, which I think we're going to be talking about. Another podcast where Roger talks about Madeira. We should keep a running tally. Way to make everyone delete this thing and they heard it already, Roger. A 79 is on the way, Roger. Nice. Mr. Newton, you're here today to help us out with a special bonus episode before the holidays to talk about Port and then specifically the 2016 vintage. So we've recently started to receive our 2016s, and we're really excited about them. We're getting a bunch of them in. 2016 is the first declared vintage since 2011, so it's kind of a special time. We got a chance to taste a bunch of these. They're beautiful wines. They're big wines with tons of fruit, but they're also going to be accessible young. They're not cheap. They're going to range between probably $90 and $120, but these are world-class wines from a world-class vintage, and it's a great opportunity to grab a couple of bottles. The 2016 vintage is being compared to 2007 in a way, but I've read in some media outlets it's like 2007 plus. So the world is very excited about 2016s, harkening older vintages like 1963, 1994. We're hoping that people will be able to take this opportunity to learn a little bit about port in general, try some of the LBVs and tawny ports also, and learn about some of these port houses before maybe you want to dive in to getting the expensive vintage ports. But however you work at it, this is an underrated category for wine, and we hope people look into it. And you think pretty well distributed throughout all 40 Binny's locations? Yes, absolutely. Every Binny's won't have every single port we're getting, but everyone's going to have some. And we have a few half bottles, but if you're interested in half bottles, that's something you should look at earlier rather than later because they didn't bottle enough half bottles, and that tends to be a pretty popular size for port people. So if that's something you want, get to a Binny's quick. And they're good to buy, that small format, because they age faster than a larger 750 ml bottle. So with a style of wine that we can say, it's not just candidate age, but it kind of should for a little bit of time, that you're going to experience that acceleration of age will be ready sooner. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mentioned that 1963 vintage just before. I mean, if you lived around the time of that vintage, you would have had to wait about 30 years before that was ready to drink. In fact, I think that in Portugal, word on the street is they're still sipping on the 63s right now. And they're perfect. And actually, I was just reading about some of these vintages. And 1927 is still going strong. And it's going to be going strong for quite a while. So if you store these wines right, they'll just last forever. But again, it's like a lot of the other premier wines in the world, Bordeaux, Barolo, a bunch of others, they last, but they're being made in a style now where they're easier to drink younger. And for people that may not have another 50 years to wait around for a wine to come around, you can still buy it and enjoy it. What's the declaration process like as far as why so infrequent? Well, it's kind of one of those situations where there's about 10, 15 producers that really dominate port, which makes it kind of nice because it's not too hard to learn about. There's pretty much three different partnerships that dominate Portugal. One, Symington, and they have stuff like Graham's, Smith Woodhouse. There's Taylor Flagate Partnership, which has Taylor, Croft and Fonseca. Usually they declare all their wines or none of their wines. When they don't declare a vintage, they can make single vineyard vintage ports, which takes one particular vineyard and they make the wine. So it's not like they're not selling port for the years that aren't vintage declared years, but only the best years make the vintages. 2016 is definitely one of those. Is a vintage declared across the entire region or country, or is it like everybody can pick their own? Well, you don't have to declare a vintage when a lot of the other producers are. Sometimes, like in 1991, there was one or two states that kind of went out on their own and declared a vintage, and then in 92, almost everybody else did. It just depends. Some of your vineyards might do really well in a year when other vineyards aren't doing so well. Some producers actually declared 2015, like Coburn declared 2015 and 2016, but not all the areas in Portugal in 2015 were good enough to declare a vintage. In 2016, they were. Can we talk about late bottle vintage a little bit and explain that? Sometimes it's a little confusing. Yeah. Okay. Actually, late bottle vintage is a really good way to start with port because you can learn a lot about the different styles of the different port houses because they're only between 20 and $30. The LBVs are aged about six years in large vats where the vintage ports are only aged about two years. They might not be the best vineyards that the producer holds, but they're always quality and they do try to make those particular wines in the style of the house. So, Grams, which is like kind of a fruity style, they'll make their LBV like that. LBVs are a really good place to start if you haven't had much port. And then you can get the idea of a house, all the different house styles without investing in a lot of expensive vintage ports. Not only that, but waiting for your vintage to be ready to drink, it gives you a good introspection into that particular year. I mean, yeah, the cost is there and we all like that, but it's also about being able to drink that expression from that vintage without waiting for your vintage port to age for three decades. We should say that there's two different kind of types. There's Ruby port and there's Tawny port. Tawny port is aged in smaller barrels and wood for, it can be a very long time, up to 40 years. It's more of a nutty flavor where Ruby ports are sweeter flavor. You like to drink them at probably, you know, cellar temperature. I like them at cellar temperature. Yeah, so it starts with two basic types, just like Bill said, Ruby and Tawny. And think about them in terms of the color. Ruby ports are youthful and Ruby in color and very deeply colored. And Tawny are Tawny in color because they receive extended oxidative aging in Barrel. Let's start with Ruby ports. Vintage ports, for example, and LBVs all fall under the Ruby category. So a basic Ruby port or a reserve Ruby port is going to be aged in very large vats, like Bill said, for two to four years. The larger the aging vessel, the less surface area of the wine is exposed to oxygen, thus it aerates and ages much slower. So you can age a Ruby port for two years and it's still going to come out Ruby color and it's not just youthful in appearance, it's also youthful on the nose and in the palate. So you get a lot of bright, dark, deep berry fruit, and they're relatively tannic, but of course very sweet because they are a sweet style. The fermentation has been interrupted after just a few days by the addition of a grape spirit that's about 77% ABV. So they halt it right around 4% to 5% during primary fermentation. That spirit will stop it, will kill all the yeast, so then what you end up with is a product that's super deeply colored, ruby in color, very youthful, fruity aromas, that's about 20% to 22% ABV and with a lot of residual sugar and very sweet. So that's ruby. So within the ruby category, ruby, ruby reserve, you have your late bottled vintage ports and your vintage ports. And then in the tonic category, these are wines that receive extended oxidative aging in smaller barrels, like Bill said. So the smaller the vessel, the more accelerating the age is going to be. So smaller, smaller barrel, meaning like roughly how many liters, like a standard wine bric, like 250 to 350 liters? Or like a butt, 500. Okay, so like 500. That's pretty much 500, 600. They're called pipes. I've seen poured pipes in Scotch whiskey warehouses. Yeah, they're like 600 liters. That's what we're going to call. And for whiskey, that's a gigantic barrel. But for port, we're considering that a small barrel. Yeah, because they sit there for like six years or a lot more. And it's not like a huge food or something. They do a mix. So I've toured through the warehouses as well in a port down Villanova de Gaia. And yeah, they've got a myriad of different sizes. It all just depends on the house and the style. So if they're going for a fruitier style, like grams, they're probably going to have a more proportion of larger barrels to maintain that fruit, because the longer you let it age, that primary fruit dissipates, and you get those oxidative aromas of butterscotch, coffee, toffee, caramel, and things like that. And then red wine, like I was saying before, loses color with age. So because of sedimentation, because we're losing the color, compounds are also losing tannin. So the tawny ports tend to be a lot less tannic on the palate than a ruby style would be as well. Another way the port houses can create their style is how much residual sugar they leave also in the wine. So, along with what you were talking about. Good point. Yeah, I forgot. Excellent. Yeah, some are drier and sweeter and yeah, everything in between. So I'm going to talk a little bit more about the 2016s and about the pricing and stuff like that. They're not cheap wines. They're all going to be right around $100, give or take. That's still holding prices relatively over the last decade or so. Yeah, because they were $70, $80, and the last declared vintage was 2011, the last big declared vintage, which we still have a few around, and those are amazing wines. And in 2014, wasn't it, that Dow's 2011 Vintage Port was the number one wine in Spectator? Yeah. 2013, 14, 13. Yeah, 13. Keep saying years, we'll get it right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, 2013, sorry. But so yeah, so they're all around $100, but when you consider that this is like a world class wine, look at like a first growth Bordeaux, like Lafite from 2015, which was a great Bordeaux vintage, that's 600 bucks. So you can get a six pack of Taylor for the same price as one bottle of Lafite. Right, right. And it has the stuffing to age and the residual sugar that it's gonna last forever. It really will. If you want to sell it and wait and see. So what a great gift for anyone who's had a baby. Oh yeah. Right, I mean, if it's a little bit, you know, It's great. A game, I know, but I'm just saying, if they had one, you want to give them a late gift, that's a great gift to age till the 21st birthday. Absolutely. That's very cool. I mean, then that's something that we get a lot of customers asking for, you know, certain vintages of all kinds of things for gifts for babies or anniversaries or something like that. And I think kind of, you know, because a port vintage only happens every so often, we tend to look at over and wrongly looking at like Scotch or Armagnac or something, but it's a lot more affordable. Absolutely. Yeah. What exactly is happening in the bottle when you're buying these vintage ports? How would it compare if you were to open it the year you purchased it versus a couple years down the line? Well, they age and they throw a lot of sediment. And that's actually a really good question too, because they tend to mellow out, the tannins tend to smooth over, it gains complexity. But another reason that that's a really good question is that when you drink a vintage port and it's got a few years on it, and the older it gets, you really need to decant these wines, and you need to pour them through a filter to catch all the sediment, because if you don't, you're going to have a glass with a ton of black stuff on the bottom. That's, I mean, you're asking about how to drink the port, and that's one of the first things you need to know. On the other side of the coin, though, if you have a tawny port, you don't need to worry about that. You can open it up, you can throw it in the refrigerator, and you can keep it for two or three weeks. So, yeah, no, you can... If not longer, I've kept mine for months. If not longer. But when it comes to a vintage port or an LBV, those are going to fall apart pretty quickly. You have to think of that as like a regular wine is once you open the bottle. I like Young Port. You know what, I do too, and we recently, at one of our stores, we were tasting about four or five of these that we recently brought in. We tasted Grams and Fonseca and Taylor, among others. There were some people that said that, oh, you know, we really need to wait another, you know, 20 years before you can drink this. And I was like, nonsense. I mean, I thought they were beautiful and fun, especially if you have a bunch of people and you just want a glass. And then there's Coburn is one of the ones we've brought in, which is actually a really interesting story. That was one of the, back in the day, that was a really famous, really good port house. And then it sort of went to seed. It was purchased by a bunch of people who were more concerned about making money than they were about making great port. And then the Symington family, which I mentioned earlier, purchased them and they've really come back and they're making good stuff. And we have the 2015 and the 2016 in our stores. And it's a really flamboyant, easy style to drink that you can open up a bottle now and enjoy. So I actually recommend that one for people that might want to pick up a bottle and see what Vintage Port is all about. That's going to be pretty accessible. On the other hand, you have something like Fonseca, and the style of that house is just really deep and tannic and complex. They're very rustic. Yeah. It needs time. They're wonderful, wonderful ports. But that's something I would recommend to somebody who is willing to be patient. Right. Yeah. You need to hang on to that for a little bit. And to your point about buying a six-pack for the same price of a bottle of Lafitte on release, it's a cool kind of project to buy six-pack. And taste them every five years and see how they're going. And it's a lot of fun. To Bill's point where he said, you're going to want to decant an aged vintage port because they throw so much sediment. Well, sediment is color and tannin that precipitates out of the liquid. So as that wine polymerizes, as those anthocyanin and tannin molecules form that sediment, there goes the color. So it gets less deeply colored and in turn, because it's slowly oxidizing. One thing to note about vintage port, it's always closed with a standard cork like we're used to. These other LBVs or Ruby Reserve, they're closed with the different top, that just the pop top and the composite cork. Tannins too. Tannins as well. Yeah. Because of the micro-oxygenation via the cork over decades, that causes that browning. So all wines are going to brown, white and red. That's where they're all going with bottle age. So this is Smith. This is Smith Woodhouse 2000, Coljita Port. And it was aged for 14 years in wood. This is the rarest type of port made. There's only about 1% of port is made this way. And it's because it all comes from the same vintage, but it's a tawny. So it's very rare. Hey, thanks for coming on the podcast. Why don't you bring something nice next time? I'll try. I'll try. So when it says 2000, what year was this released, you said? It was aged for 14 years, so I assume it was released in 2014. The thing about port 2 is, let's be honest about this, it doesn't exactly fly off the shelves in your retail establishment. So what happened was 2011s were released. They got a ton of press. They got wine of the year. The Dow sold out really, really fast. But then it takes a while to sell through these. So it actually works to their advantage a little bit, that they only declare a vintage about three times a decade. So you load up when you get a vintage declared and it lasts you, and you can hang on to them forever in the stores. They're not going to go bad. I think that's really cool. I mean, we talked about accessible price points and accessible availability is another thing entirely too. You can't just walk into any store and find some high name 2015 Bordeaux. But you can find these vintage ports even a couple of years after they're released. It's true. And it doesn't really fit a business model buying a lot of these things because they're not going to turn over in three months the way they tell you in business school. But sometimes you just have to buy the stuff because it's really, really good. People should have a place to go where they can buy this stuff. And it's just worth it. So we can say this is worth drinking. I think so. I think it should be noted too that what's cool about these, like you said with the tawny, is that you can open it and you don't have to worry about finishing it all in one sitting. It's pretty substantial. Yeah. To Bill's point, they definitely do keep for several weeks as long as they're in the refrigerator. But yeah, I've kept some way, way longer. And they're not as fresh and vibrant as when you open them months after. But they definitely still keep and still taste pretty good. And by the way, if you want to taste a really, really good tawny port that you can find easily, it's always available. Try Taylor 20 Year Tawny. It's about 50 bucks, but it's a fantastic bottle of wine. And you should note that with those 10, 20, 30, and 40 year old tawnys, that age statement is the average age of the juice in that bottle. So some is way younger and some is way older. They keep stocks from way, way back in the day. Obviously, the price goes up with the number of years that it ages. But for me, the sweet spot is 20 years. When it starts to get to 30 and 40, I guess there's a place for it, but that's a lot of time in oak. 10 years are really good as a starting point. If you want to learn, they're a little less expensive. They're very vibrant, but the 20s are really complex and delicious, I think. 20 years at that price too. I think there's flavor profiles in them that will appeal to some of your spirit drinkers. You have people that are interested in bourbons and ryes and single malt scotches. There's going to be elements to a 20-year tawny that really hit on a lot of those similar flavor profiles. Totally. It's got wood spice, it has sweetness, it has viscosity to it, and most importantly, it doesn't have the absurd price tag of a 20-year-old spirit either. Thanks for bringing this wine again, Bill. It's not very often that we get to taste a Coljita vintage tawny. I mean, they're very rare. But you have those typical tertiary aromas. I don't know if you guys are picking up on that, kind of like we said before, but the dried flowers, lots of that kind of sultana raisin quality to it, little pruney, which on the fruit spectrum. Tobacco. I don't think it's not an overly big wine for a port. It's fairly graceful, very subtle. It's got a lot of finesse, that's for sure. I agree. There's some really nice citrus quality to this, too. I was just gonna say orange, like orange peel. Kind of like a orange spice. I was expecting a physically heavier wine, too. I was expecting something that was gonna be like chewy. Tannys aren't heavy. No, rubies are. Oh, they have acidity. Even despite their age, they have this acidity that keeps the structure alive. Ladies and gentlemen, that brings us to the Q&A portion of the Barrel to Bottle Podcast. Write your question to us, comments at binnys.com via email or hit us up on social, at Binny's Beauf on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Our question this week comes from Katie Ricecakes on Instagram. Love that name. No sarcasm this time. Katie asks, why do people drink more red wine in cooler weather? I think one of the big reasons is because they don't want to drink red wine in hot weather. It's practically impossible for me to drink red wines in hot weather. Speak for yourself, I have air conditioning. I love a nice rosé on the deck. I love a nice white on the deck, but when it starts getting cooler out, it just works drinking the reds. You put on the sweater. You put on your knit cap. You take out the pipe. Leave the ascot though. You leave that. Yeah. It's like chilly, right? Why do people eat more chilly during cold weather? Soup season. Same thing. Yeah. It's comfort wine. One big thing is red wines are on a whole higher in alcohol than whites, right? So not only do we serve them warm, which totally sucks in 95 degree weather, but they're 13.5, 14.5, sometimes 16% ABV, and alcohol evaporates much more readily when it's hot. So you just taste an alcohol burned out, nasty, warm red wine. It's not the red wine that everybody thinks of when you think of a delicious bottle of Bordeaux. It's just not the case. You make it sound so appealing. Yeah, I know. Speaking to your point, Kristin, about the higher ABV, that's a good argument for why do we drink fortified wines in the winter. The port that we just drank today, this is, what kind of alcohol are we looking at on that? Probably about 20. So I mean, they definitely have a warming quality to them that's nice in the way that a whisky or a spirit's appealing when it's cold out. Yeah, so rice cakes, it's just about temperature. But hey, I got a good warm weather port drink for y'all. Yeah. Okay, so here's what you do. Cocktail? Cocktail? Yes, you take white port, okay, you pour yourself a little bit of white port, and then you pour yourself a little bit of tonic water, and then you put a lemon in there. Make it nice and cold ice, it's delicious. It sounds terrific. It's fantastic. Can we do it now? I spent... And add Aperol. I spent many afternoons in Porto drinking those. I bet. Delicious. Cool. I bet that's good with cheese too. Excellent with cheese, as is port in general, especially tonic port. Oh, man. Well, tonic port in Portugal serves sometimes as an aperitif, and it's really served chilled often. Yes. So it's not just a dessert wine there, they'll serve it in the beginning of the evening. Actually, they'll serve it at the beginning during dinner, and at the end. And after, yeah. Yes. They drink port. Well, Bill, white port, what is white port? So if you're interested in that cocktail I was talking about, Neaport makes a really, really good white port. Actually, they make a couple. They make one, it's about $20. It's just port made with white grapes. And it is the same sort of texture as port. It's generally not as heavy. But they also make a 10-year-old, which is really good, and it's in a few of our stores. It's definitely a niche thing, not a lot of people drink white port. All right, Katie Rice Cakes, that's about $20 Binny's gift card worth a answer for you. Everybody else can write your questions to us via email, comments at binnys.com. Hit us up on social, on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, at Binny's Bev. Thanks folks for tuning in to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. We are really happy to bring you this episode on vintage port and more importantly, the 2016 vintage. Bill, thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for having me. You'll come back, right? Absolutely. This is awesome, really appreciate it. And Roger, thank you. Pleasure to be here. Glad to talk about the 2016 port. As always, I'm Kristin. I'm Greg. I'm Pat. I'm Roger. And I'm Bill. Keep tasting. And it makes you kind of logy, you know? Big fat, I don't even know what that means. Big fat cabernet in 95 degree weather. Right, right. You wouldn't, because you're not a fat guy. Fat guys know what I'm talking about with the logy? Oh yeah. It's a logy. I don't know, I'm just agreeing, because I have to, because he's a fellow fat. You guys stick together? Yes, we fats have to stick together. Blah, makes you feel inactive and heavy. So remember when I called you off of the 95 degree event at the parking lot? Because I would have been an angry fat. Literally, I was like, just don't come. That's the same thing. That's a red wine in 95 degree weather, just not good.