Here’s another cell phone shot… Spotted this on the sidewalk in San Francisco’s Financial District, under some scaffolding.
Photo taken March 26, 2011.
Port of Call: A newbie’s voyage through a classic wine
It started on a whim.
I’m really not sure what made me wake up one day with the desire to buy a bottle of Port. I’m not much of a drinker. Like many people, I enjoy a glass of wine with dinner. But I’ve never made a habit of it, and I don’t claim to know the first thing about it. I have never been to a tasting, never toured the nearby wineries of Napa or Sonoma, never taken a class or perused a copy of Wine Spectator. And Port? Please. I’d only tasted Portugal’s finest one or two times in my life. Good, I remembered. Classy. And expensive. This was the extent of my knowledge.
But there I was with this odd notion rattling around in my head. Bemused, I posted to Facebook: “Next time I’m feeling flush I think I’ll buy a nice bottle of Port.” I was half-kidding. My friends followed up with jokes about smoking jackets and cigars. And that was almost the end of it.
Almost, but not quite.
A few days later my wife Lisa and I happened to be at a local Cost Plus market. They have a decent selection of inexpensive wines there, much smaller than you’d find at a specialty shop but usually worth a look. I had just finished reading Martin Walker’s The Dark Vineyard, a pleasant mystery novel set in the southwest of France, and the preponderance of wine in that book had made me interested in sampling some French reds, so I wandered over. But as I was perusing the selection, Lisa called to me from the other end of the aisle. “Look, honey, they have Port!”
There were perhaps half a dozen bottles there, but even that small assortment was enough to leave me dizzy. Ruby? Tawny? LBV? I had no idea what any of it meant, or which ones I might enjoy. But my eye soon settled on one particular bottle. While most of the others were pretty cheap, this one was about $30. But that wasn’t all that made it stand out. GRAHAM’S, the label declared proudly, TAWNY PORTO. AGED 10 YEARS. It practically radiated sophistication. But the price… I hemmed and hawed for a few moments, subconsciously fingering my wallet, but Lisa saw right through me. “Go ahead,” she said. “Buy the good one.” I bought the good one.
And I fell in love.
It took one sip, and one sip only, to realize I’d discovered something wonderful. By the time I’d finished off my little cordial glass of Port, I was hooked. And by the time I’d worked my way through the bottle, I was obsessed. I devoured every scrap of data I could find online about Port. I watched videos about the history of Port. I studied up on the varieties, until I knew the difference between a Vintage Port and a Colheita (more or less, anyway; don’t quiz me just yet). And in the end, I drew three conclusions:
1. I love Port. This is my drink. I never even knew I had a drink before, but I do. And I’m gonna be a Port guy for the rest of my life.
2. My only interest is in Aged Tawny Port, at least for now. Why? Because it’s more affordable than top-tier Vintage Port. Because it’s ready to drink the day you buy it. Because it will last for a few weeks after it’s opened, so I can sip and savor at my own pace. And because it tastes so gosh-darned good. Eventually, I expect to branch out into the full range of Port offerings, and there are many. But I think Aged Tawnies should keep me occupied for a good long while.
3. I want to spread the word. I don’t kid myself: I’m as green as a blade of grass in this world of Port. I KNOW NOTHING. But I don’t care. I’m going to make use of my naïvete. I’m going to explore, slowly and methodically, and I’m going to write down what I discover. Veteran oenophiles aren’t likely to find much value in these observations, but I know I will. Maybe you will too.
Unfortunately, I did not record my impressions of the Graham’s 10-year Tawny that launched my new mania. So I must return to square one. In my reading, there seems to be a consensus that aged tawnies really hit their peak at the 20-year mark, so that’s where I shall begin this journey. I have just spent the past two weeks in the company of a lovely bottle of Niepoort 20-Year Tawny, and my impressions will be posted tomorrow.
This is going to be fun!
FURTHER READING
There’s a lot of material online about Port, but I find that much of it was written by people who know a great deal about wine and very little about writing. Here are a few articles that rise above the crowd:
Tawny Time — aside from the curiously catty third paragraph, this excellent feature by Dave McIntyre packs a lot of useful info into a very readable package. (San Francisco Chronicle – July 6, 2006)
Basics of Tawny Port — this article from the specialty site For the Love of Port is written for a professional food-service audience, but is great for newbies too. It goes into great detail about the various kinds of Tawny and what to expect from each. FTLoP also has a busy forum area, but Vintage Port dominates the discussion.
This short video from the History Channel’s “Modern Marvels” series has some nifty historical facts as well as a great peek at the robotic grape-stomper developed by the Symington Family Estates…
Book Review: Persian Fire
Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West by Tom Holland
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Tom Holland’s history of the Persian Wars is thorough, enlightening and eminently readable, striking just the right balance between big-picture analysis and enthralling personal anecdotes. The tricky thing about this conflict — which pitted the small but scrappy city-states of Athens and Sparta against the almost inconceivable might of the Persian Empire under the all-powerful Darius and Xerxes — is that there were very few battles, but to understand them requires a story spanning several generations, dozens of nations and hundreds of names. You can’t understand Xerxes unless you know about Cyrus, you can’t understand the actions of the Greeks unless you know about the Ionians, and you can’t understand any of it without unraveling a morass of double-crosses, palace intrigues, inscrutable oracles and personal vendettas.
So, much like Herodotus, who wrote the first (and in some ways still the best) version of this story, Holland goes way back to before the beginning, tracing the rise of the Persian Empire and the complex factors that drew Asia and Europe ever closer to total war; a war that doesn’t really begin until you’re halfway through the book.
But Herodotus, great pioneer that he was, also let himself get sidetracked by the occasional tall tale or mythical monster. Where Holland bests him is in his clear focus and his ability to get into the heads of his subjects: rarely have I read a history book that so seamlessly adopted multiple points of view. Holland doesn’t just tell us what the Great King did at particular juncture, but why, and from the perspective of the King’s own brand of logic. He also does a pretty good job of making the story relevant to a 21st century audience through the use of modern East vs. West metaphors.
It isn’t perfect. A little more detail surrounding the battles themselves would have been welcome, since — let’s be honest — that’s what most readers will come in for, to get "the real story behind 300" or whatnot. And as clear as Holland’s writing is, the narrative itself can still be hard to follow simply because there’s so much going on. I also found it a much slower read than I expected, chewing on it for the better part of two weeks. But those quibbles aside, Persian Fire is an excellent addition to the canon, and a must-read for anyone interested in a non-academic exploration of the war.
Photo of the Day: July 4, 2011
Happy birthday, U.S.A.
What can I say? I grew up in Philly. The Fourth is a pretty big deal there.
“I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of a work of fiction should be to tell a story; and I have never believed that the novelist who properly performed this first condition of his art, was in danger, on that account, of neglecting the delineation of character… It may be possible, in novel-writing, to present characters successfully without telling a story; but it is not possible to tell a story successfully without presenting characters: their existence, as recognisable realities, being the sole condition on which the story can be effectively told.”
–Wilkie Collins, 1861
Book Review: Robinson Crusoe
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
My rating: * * *
This one goes into the “at least I can say I’ve read ___” category. I’m not one of those people who’s put off by a 17th century viewpoint, but the archaic spelling and grammar made this a slow, dreary read for me, at least through the first half. Add to this Defoe’s annoying habits of (a) repeating himself and (b) skipping over several years at a time only to (c) go into excruciating detail over trivial points, and I can see why so many modern readers are put off by the whole thing, never mind the slavery and animal cruelty and imperialism and the fact that it sometimes takes Crusoe ten years just to make a decision (like “hey, maybe I should explore this island!”).
But I stuck with it, and I have to admit most of the second half actually made a rather exciting read. Things go off the rails at the very end, but by then Defoe has enough momentum built up to carry the reader over the finish line.