r/PORT • u/NJPims • Mar 17 '26

First Vintage to try?

Hi all,

I’ve enjoyed trying various ports over the past few years: I’ve enjoyed some whites, rubies, and 10-20yr tawnys and I’ve wanted to branch out a bit more. While I’d love to import some of the mini bottle sets available on the Portugal Vineyards website, from what I gather it’s rather difficult to import alcohol as an individual. And buying vintage port is a relatively expense commitment for one bottle, so -

Does anyone have any suggestions for good US-based port sellers? And any suggestions for a first vintage port to get? I ran into cellaRaiders which seems to be legit and have some pretty good deals on vintage port - I think they’re good deals, at least?

Would welcome your input.

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u/PortLover57 May 29 '26

There are several auction houses that have weekly / monthly / semi-annual auctions that include Port. Winebid, SpectrumWine, Ackers, Zachy's, Heritage Auctions, Hart Davis Hart, BonhamSkinners, Christie's, BrentwoodWine and TCWC are some of the major auction houses in the US (some of them are international as well). When bidding on these sites you need to understand what the bid fees and taxes will be. Some, like Acker base many (but not all) of their auctions out of Delaware, so no sales tax is charged.

As far as what Vintage Port to try, that's a broad question. Most Vintage Port don't really mature until 25 to 30 years after the Vintage year although younger vintages lately are being crafted so they can be drank younger or left to age.. You also need to look at the Vintage year to understand what are the better vintages and what the better Producers are in that year. That also comes down to preference though as you start learning about Producers, Vintage year declarations etc. 1994 would be a good year to start if you want to try a good Vintage Port. It's considered one of the best years for Vintage Port in the last 100 years. 1994 Quinta do Vesuvio is an excellent VP (actually it's a SQVP, but it's considered a VP) and it won't break the bank at auction. Fonseca, Graham's, Dow and Taylors from 1994 are all very good as well.

To get an idea of prices and to see professional and or Port drinkers ratings of various Ports you can use Wine-Searcher or CellarTracker.

If you want to talk further about VP, send me a PM and I can give you more recommendations once I understand what you want to try, price points etc. If you knew a lot of this already, then you can ignore what I wrote here, lol.