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.

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.

Two magnums of Port! Hooray!

Good Port, too. 2003 was a great vintage for Port and who could possibly sniff at Taylor's and Fonseca? Now all I have to do is hope I last long enough for them to  be ready. I'll need some help to finish magnums of Port so I hope all of my friends don't start hating me.

Lovely people and good friends, the neighbours. We seem to have been following each other across London for quite a while, now. I greatly appreciate the gifts.

Fonseca Guimararens 1988
A pure, refined nose of pure blueberry fruit. It smells very elegant for Port. No shortage of concentration, though. There is elegance and refinement on the palate, too, with great layers of flavour. The fruit is quite lovely. This is a really excellent Port.

Taylor's Quinta de Vargellas 1988
The nose of this explodes with hedonistic excitement and power. Huge power, weight and concentration. It also smells very much like the homemade blueberry rum I made. The palate is a fireball of intensity, hugely fruity, hugely tannic, hugely concentrated. Real length and style here too. This is a really excellent Port as well.

Votes for the best: 3 for Fonseca and only me for Taylor's. They are both pretty freaking nice, though.