Vintage Character and Late Bottled Vintage Ports

Not all ports are made to age endlessly. A vintage character port is normally aged in barrel for about five years. The notion behind vintage character port is to try and offer the same fruitiness and richness of a relatively young vintage port while blending away its spirity edges. It is ready to drink the day it is bottled, but will keep, once opened, for weeks. Similarly, as its name implies, Late Bottled Vintage (LBV) port is made from grapes harvested in a specific year from a selection of vineyards that is left to age in barrel for four to six years before bottling. The extra time in wood tends to mellow its spirity, fruit flavours, offering you the complexity of vintage port at half the price and you need not wait two or three decades for it to mature. Most LBVs are filtered and sold as ready-to-drink ports, hence the no-muss, no-fuss moniker.

Brands to look for include: Cockburn's, Dow's, Fonseca, Graham, Smith Woodhouse, Taylor's, Warre. Prices vary from $20 to $35 (approximate retail price).

To read "Cheers to the Years: Passing the Port Three Generations Down the Road" by Anthony Gismondi, click here.