Come with me, dance, my dear,
Winter's so cold this year;
But you are so warm,
My wintertime love, to me."
-Wintertime Love, The Doors

For three days I had been holed up. Outside the wind howled off the water and the snow had turned dirty and icy.  I was laboring to complete a research project for noted university scholar.  My shoulders and neck ached from hunching over a keyboard and whaling away for seven hours or more per day.

This morn I saw the finish line.  Just another 8 hours and I can say goodbye to all this.  Come 2:00 I had clocked four or five hours.  Labor on and you can finish it, my industrious side told me.  Enough! Cried the ret of me.  And so I quit, within so little more to do.

Then came port.  Port, oh lovely port, who washed away my guilt for laboring further.

The word Port owes its birth to the word "Oporto," a town in Portugal that is or at least was known as "the chief port."  Port is a fortified wine- it's made from red grapes of varying sorts and it has alcohol added to it.  Originally, it is said, this was done in order to help preserve the wine.  How so?  Well, when you open wine it is good for a short time before it undergoes a chemical change and a plunge in taste due to the air.  Adding alcohol retards this.  Apparently, however, folks so enjoyed the extra punch that it became a style in itself.  Surprise, surprise.

Presidential Porto