Some years later, on our first visit to the Napa Valley, I asked at one winery (Beringer's?) about Port wine. The guide gently told me it was for older drinkers whose taste buds were no longer sensitive enough to appreciate the subtle and complex flavors of better wines.

That was a remarkably ignorant person, or was repeating the company line. As I learned by living a year in a Cambridge college, port is in fact a quite sophisticated beverage and well worth savoring . . . If you get the good stuff. Same is true of sherry, similar course of instruction.