The RAF 'habit' of not allowing the decanter to touch the table is something which seemed to creep in during the 1980s and is actually bolleaux!
The best passing of the port I recall was when I was a guest of ULOTC. Their port decanters were in a magnificent silver model of a horse-drawn gun limber, which one wheeled down the table from person to person.
Those decanters were simply removed and replaced by each diner when filling their glass - and not in that 'council' manner of filling it to the brim as practised by some supplementary list oiks either.
Of course our pongo chums have
far more wedgimental plunder following their centuries of existence than the RAF could ever have....
After RAFC went comprehensive, they found the need to issue a 'how to use one's cutlery' guide for the benefit of the peasants who should have been at that place in Bedfordshire and for whom using anything other than a dagger or wooden spoon was probably a distinct novelty. Some OT clown had suggested that 'foreign food' such as frogs legs or snails could be eaten with the fingers - I would love to have seen him try eating a snail that way without receiving second degree burns to the fingers!