Passing the Port

One of the wine trade’s most cherished traditions is the rule that port, particularly a decanter of vintage port, must be passed round a table from the right hand of diners to the left. No single satisfactory explanation has ever been advanced, although so fiercely held is the custom that a miniature railway was constructed to transport decanters across an inconvenient fireplace in the Senior Common Room of New College Oxford.

1. Howkins, B., Real Men drink Port…and Ladies do too! (London, 2011).