April 17, 2026
When your wine is older than grandpa
Rubens Menin's 150 Years "Old" Port Wine
€10k “Very Very Old” Port sparks flexing, eye-rolls, and 0.1% backlash
TLDR: A 150‑year‑old, €10,000 Port from Rubens Menin dropped with only 200 bottles and a whole lot of pageantry. The comments pitted flexing collectors and history buffs against skeptics who say age ≠ taste and critics calling it a trophy for the 0.1%, with shout‑outs to undervalued Douro reds.
Rubens Menin turned 70 and uncorked a spectacle: a €10,000 “Very Very Old Tawny,” a 150‑year‑old Port bottled in just 200 beveled crystals after a chapel blessing and roaming violinists. Gorgeous? Absolutely. But the real fireworks popped online, where the comments had more bite than any tasting note.
First came the title police, with sidpatil fussing over the exact phrasing of “Very Very Old,” proving wine nerds will edit anything—including your birthday headline. Then the flex: quantdude casually dropped that they’ve got an 1896 Port sitting in a UK warehouse and even linked it for proof (Taylor’s 1896), only to admit they’re “not sure” they’ll ever open it. Collector swagger meets existential dread.
Taste snobs piled in next. barrkel, who’s sipped 1800s‑era fortifieds, said it wasn’t “appreciably better” than modern bottles, though a 1970s tawny once sent them on a lifelong hunt. Translation: age isn’t everything—flavor is. Meanwhile, jimnotgym begged everyone not to sleep on Douro reds (cheap, great) and tossed the crowd a history rabbit hole on why so many Port houses have very British names.
Then the class war gate-crashed the party. M95D called the whole move a play for the 0.1%, side‑eyeing Menin’s plan to make Brazil his top market and his boast of a 20% annual return. Limited bottles for collectors first? Cue the meme: “paywall, but for your taste buds.”
Key Points
- •Rubens Menin launched a limited 150-year-old “Very Very Old Tawny” Port, priced at €10,000 in Portugal, with 200 bottles of 500 ml each.
- •The blend was created by consulting winemaker Tiago Alves de Souza and resident winemaker Manuel Saldanha using wines sourced from various Douro wineries, incorporating 19th-century grapes.
- •Menin Douro Estates includes the Menin and Horta Osório (HO) brands, totaling 185 hectares of vineyards, 30 hectares of which are old vines, and uses only estate-grown grapes.
- •Menin has invested €65 million in land, vineyards, winery construction, and restorations, and plans an additional €25 million for more vineyards, a new winery, and a wine-tourism hotel, targeting 20% annual returns.
- •Current production is 650,000 bottles annually using 54 grape varieties, with plans to reach 1 million bottles; Menin aims to prioritize Brazil as his top wine market.