How To Use Port Tongs & Decant a Bottle of Vintage Port starring Roy Hersch

A video from For the Love of Port, a port-centric newsletter (the 65th issue is coming out soon!) which has been going strong since 2004.

According to his website, For the Love of Port’s editor-in-chief Roy Hersch was compelled to start this magazine because of a cryptic experience he shared with the president of Portugal after being invited to some bullshit wine conference:

June 2003, Roy was one of just two Americans selected by the Confraria do Vinho do Porto (Port Wine Brotherhood), which was attended by Portuguese President Sampaio. To honor his oath to the Confraria, Roy quit his day job and began writing a monthly newsletter, For The Love Of Port, in February 2004

For the Love of Port says the Port Wine Brotherhood was started in 1982 & includes a lot of silly costume bullshit and flights to Portugal, so it sounds awesome.

Anyway, watch the above video because Roy is a compelling onscreen figure.

My favorite things about this video are about to be listed:

• Despite the silent understanding he shared with President Sampaio & the attendant confidence engendered by silent pacts, Roy is dangerously nervous, throughout. 
• Taylor, his daughter who was named after a specific vintage of port wine, pouring a bottle of her eponymous vintage into cheesecloth after her father breaks the bottle’s neck with hot tongs & a cold rag. She’s so…determined. And scared. Determined or scared. Scared.
• The camera person, whoever she is. I think about her in the moments after the camera stopped rolling, when she looked up and realized “This is it.”

Also, his newsletter should be called The Port Authority.

Good day.