Would you care for a (special) Port ?

[Jim McDougall]

Thank you so much Fernando, beautifully done response and thank you for the intriguing detail! I recall some years ago when Mr. Neal passed, and the auctioning of his collection seems to have gone on for some time. He was clearly not only a prolific collector, but an esteemed expert who greatly advanced the preservation of firearms history with his studies.

All the best,
Jim

[kronckew]

so, a bit off topic, how was the contents?

i love a good port, some nice quintas out there, tho i gather they don't do them any more. i spent a week driving around the douro valley with the wife a few years back, sampling when i could the wife drove then. amazing how steep are the hills they grow the grapes on. they have to wear safety lines to keep from falling when the tend or pick the grapes!

edited: just remembered, it was spring of 1997, so i may have been there when it was bottled!

[fernando]

Originally Posted by kronckew

so, a bit off topic, how was the contents?

i love a good port, some nice quintas out there, tho i gather they don't do them any more. i spent a week driving around the douro valley with the wife a few years back, sampling when i could the wife drove then. amazing how steep are the hills they grow the grapes on. they have to wear safety lines to keep from falling when the tend or pick the grapes!

edited: just remembered, it was spring of 1997, so i may have been there when it was bottled!

The bottle is still unopened. I am not such a crazy fan of port whine and, besides, my idea was to keep it as an arms collector's item. The Douro whine region, one of the oldest demarcated whine areas in the world (1756), is still in good shape, eventually at a peak stage, in international terms. It was classified in 2001 as world heritage, by UNESCO. They have just opened a museum there. When my daughter was at the nearby university, doing her veterinary degree, i used to go there and buy home made (unlabeled, untaxed, unmachined) old port directly from the farmer's cask, to offer as courtesy to friends; stuff of the best.
Fernando

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