congratulations!

Best wishes to oletheros and pizza_tram! May your lives be happy and fulfilling and all that kind of thing, and may El Javalina del Amor whuffle softly in your ears as you sleep for many years to come.

booze review: porto barros 1977 colheita

Yum!

Very vaprous. Nice sweet flavor to start off, caramel and butterscotchy. Had I mentioned vaprous? Very much so. Almost whisk[e]y-like. Lovely deep caramel color, too.

Matured in wood, and you can smell it. Nice oakey nose (Phil Oakey????). I could sit and just smell this one all day.

Glorious mouth feel. Yeah. A bit of dry finish. I hope jehanna will help me figure out what it is, but there's some kind of flavor that comes in toward the end and hangs around-- it's almost... No, I don't have the words. Not as long and candy-like a finish as Warres Otima, but definitely something to remember. A little bitter, to balance out the sweet.

Yeah, I recommend this. It's very very tasty.

Boston-area folks, it can be found in half-bottles at the liquor store on Route 9 in Framingham, in the same building as the Fresh Fields (on the right as you're heading away from Boston, right before the Trader Joe's plaza). 40 bucks for the half-bottle, and I've seen full-sized bottles for, um, 65ish in Shrewsbury.

That liquor store also has 20 and 30-year Taylor Fladgate tawnies and a couple of other things I hadn't run into before. I'll definitely be returning there, since I've discovered that 20-year tawny ports are MUCH smoother than 10-year. Not really a surprise, I suppose, but 20's are still harder to find...

Now, if you'll excuse me, I shall take my colheita and relax a bit.

cheese experience

I went to Fresh Fields today to get some random stuff, and ended up with cheese. I had something dry and Spanish suggested to me by the cheese guy there, plus I picked up something runny and French, a 4-year-aged gouda, and something else random.

On the way out, the guy who bagged my groceries leaned in close and whispered to me in a heavy French accent, "This, this is very special cheese," and then quickly walked off into the store.