nwb - 6/17/2012 8:47 PM

I'm not a fan of wine, but I love a good port with a cigar a few times a year. Great combination IMHO.

87North - 6/19/2012 3:30 PM

I like a port from time to time, as well as a good heavy red wine, or a nice beer, or vodka tonic, or rum, or scotch, or bourbon, or my latest new love Rye... Or coffee, or iced tea, or hot tea, or sometimes just some water. But yes, I sometimes enjoy port with my cigar.

Brlesq - 6/19/2012 2:33 PM

SenorPablo - 6/17/2012 9:54 PM

It's been awhile but it always like a good 10 or 20 year Tawny - the older the better.

-Paul

Beegerply - 6/19/2012 2:01 PM

I like port with a cigar just don't seem to drink it very often

FNA - 6/19/2012 3:28 PM

For those who find Port "too sweet" may I suggest Madeira wines.

My favorite Port style is of course vintage port. Nothing like a wine that one has personally aged for 20 or more years. However, like most others, I cannot afford to indulge my taste for vintage Port as often as I would like. That's why it's great that Port wine offers so many options.

Among the first of those options is Port-style wine. Port comes from Port-ugal, in days past exclusively shipped from Opporto. Nowadays, we see Port-style wines, called port, shipped from several American states, South African and Australia. Australia produces several very highly thought of Port-style wines in the tawny style including Clocktower and Galway Pipe. The Clocktower is a very sweet, dark brown wine with a cordial like body. I can highly recommend either of these brands and in general I can recommend Oz ports.

Back to the genuine article. It is not uncommon today to find Late Bottled Vintage or LBV Port. This and another style, Colheita, are made from a single harvest of grapes as is vintage Port. The big difference is time. Vintage Port is bottled after 2 years in wooden barrels, LBV after 4-6 years, and Colheita after a minimum of 7 years. Some commenters believe LBV is as close to a vintage Port as one can come. LBV is generally the least expensive of these 3 types, usually under $30 a bottle.

Tawnies and Rubies are blends of different vintages (harvests). Ruby is likely the most popular style worldwide. Long aged tawny ports, 20 and 30 year aged, can be as expensive as a bottle of vintage, the big difference being you can take a 20 year old tawny home, pull the cork and drink it.

Don't throw the ruby Port out with the bathwater. Many Port "houses" offer their ruby Ports under the house proprietary label such as Fonseca Bin 27, Warre's Warrior, Sandeman's Founder's reserve and Graham's Six Grapes. These wines have very wide distribution. The Port houses want to sell their highly coveted vintage wines; these proprietary wines are the public face (maybe I should say Public taste) of the wineries in the 6 out of 10 years that they are not producing vintage wines.

Port and cigars in the war room, gentlemen (and ladies).