KPB
Posts: 4649
Joined: 11/25/2012
From: Ithaca, New York
Status: offline
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Excellent! With a bottle like that, you will have issues pulling the cork -- this is just a given.
I use a thing call the Durand, but in fact you can do the same with an Ah-So (a two-pronged thing) and a thin spiral corkscrew like a screwpull. The issue is that the cork is nearly certain to be mostly shot -- either very dry and stuck to the neck of the bottle, or (equally bad) very soft and squishy with a consistency sort of like a heavy chocolate cake. Plus, the wet version might be very loose in the neck and ready to fall in at a touch.
So, you need:
1) A very fine strainer, such as a metal tea strainer.
2) A decanter, or a clean wine bottle, rinsed but allowed to drain so it is mostly dry.
3) Perhaps, a funnel.
You then attempt to extract the cork using your various tools. With luck only a small amount breaks loose and falls in. But 90% of the time the whole cork falls in, or a big part of it.
So, you are prepared, and gently pour through the strainer into the waiting decanter or bottle -- don't splash, just run it down the side. At the end you will find a great deal of sludge in the bottle, maybe an inch deep. Not worth trying to extract wine from that stuff -- just dump into the sink. I often rinse the VP bottle, get the remaining cork out, and then decant gently back into the bottle, so that I can serve it from the original bottle.
Let it settle if you were rough and managed to stir up a cloud of sediment -- port shouldn't be cloudy.
You'll find that the first night, the port is sort of "spirity" like a cocktail, but that the second night it is totally transformed and has an amazing open nose, and is much more integrated. Then by day four it will slowly start to sag, and best to finish it by the end of day five (in my case usually by the end of day three).
Port can be corked, which is just life. The cork would smell musty, as usual, but the port itself might not actually reek of TCA. Oddly, a corked port often seems a bit muted, and may seem to have a minty note on the nose, but actually can be fine to drink. Still, if you pick up a strong aroma of laundry room or mushrooms on the cork, your bottle probably won't be at the level it should have been. And if it has so much TCA that you actually can taste the port as being corked, well, sometimes luck just isn't with us in this wine thing.
_____________________________
Ken Birman
The Professor of Brettology
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RE: Port Season is officially OPEN! - 
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