Wrathmonk (your #102),
...Come on Danny42C - lets get this tradition back to the 40's!!...
Cannot answer for the '40s, as (in India and Burma, where I was ennobled), we didn't have dining-in nights (what with havin' a war to fight an' all) and had forgotten what Port looked like anyway.
On my return to the RAF in UK in '49, things were only slowly getting underway in the mid-'50s and although I vaguely remember dining-in and guest nights of the period, think that the old tradition of "never letting the decanter touch the table" had gone by the board: in fact the practice was to slide the decanter along the table - but always to keep it moving.
Harveys is the stuff.
Cheers, Danny42C.