My second-floor room in the Carris hotel was a mere bottle’s throw across a cobbled street from the historic Factory House, a de facto clubhouse for the British port shippers in Oporto, northern Portugal. When I woke at 7am, I could see the Wedgwood-blue ballroom swarming with people hard at work decanting the three bottles of each of the 19 great vintage ports we were to taste that morning. When the tasting started at 11.30am, we were warned that this exercise was a one-off. That morning half of the world’s stock of Cockburn 1896, for example, would be opened, and there would be only four bottles of the 1912 left after our predations.
我在凱黎世酒店(Carris Hotel)二層的房間，與那個歷史悠久的酒莊不過是一條鵝卵石鋪就的小路的距離。這里是英國波特酒商在葡萄牙北部波爾圖的俱樂部。當我早上7點醒來時，看到在那韋奇伍德藍(wedgwood，英國著名瓷器，粉藍色為其招牌色——譯者注)色調的宴會廳里擠滿了人，正專心致志地將我們即將品嘗的19種極好的年份波特酒各醒三瓶。在11點半的品鑒會開始之初，我們便得到提醒說，這樣的體驗不會再有第二次。舉個例子，在那個早晨，全世界一半的考克伯恩(Cockburn)1896都被打開了，而經過我們的掃蕩之后，僅僅只有4瓶1912年份得以幸存。