Buy Port Wine and Give Your Taste Buds a Treat
Vintage Port Alone, or Port and Stilton – a Connoisseur's Delight
Oct 30, 2009
Port wine is sweet and red. Except that occasionally it’s dry and white. In fact, it comes in a wide variety of styles, and while port and stilton is the classic combination, its versatility ensures that it can be drunk on almost any occasion.
To the connoisseur, a good vintage port wine is the world’s finest drink, and even the most basic ruby port has much to offer. Buy port wine, and enter a whole world of flavors.
What is Port Wine?
In essence, port is wine from Portugal’s Douro valley, fortified with the spirit aguardente – often known in English simply as brandy. Port wine owes its characteristic sweetness to the fact that the addition of the spirit stops fermentation while some of the sugar in the grapes still remains. It usually contains twenty per cent alcohol.
Although port works well as an aperitif, a dessert wine, or on its own, the traditional accompaniment is cheese – port and stilton being the traditional pairing. For those not partial to cheese, it goes equally well with nuts, dried fruit and chocolate.
To buy port wine, it is useful first to know something of the possibilities.
What to Buy: Port Wine Comes in Many Styles
White Port Wine
- White port is the only port made from white grapes. It can be sweet or dry, and is best drunk chilled, as an aperitif. Mixed equally with tonic water, and with ice and lemon added, white port makes a refreshing summer drink known as Portonic.
Ruby Port Wine
- Not the best port wine, but by far the most common – the name gives the color. The wine of several harvests is blended and aged in wooden barrels for up to three years before being bottled. Ruby port is sold ready to drink, and seldom requires decanting. If no type is specified on the label, the port is a ruby.
Tawny Port Wine
- Then there is tawny, which, like ruby, takes its name from the color. Genuine tawny port wine spends much longer in the barrel than ruby, acquiring a brownish color and nutty flavor. Cheap tawnies, made by adding a little white port to a ruby, are not worth bothering with. To appreciate a true tawny port wine, it is best to buy one on which the age is marked – anything from ten to forty years.
Reserve or Vintage Character Port Wine
- Like the cheap tawnies, vintage character port wine is not necessarily what it seems, and the designation lacks official approval. It is a blend of ordinary rubies, from which it differs largely in being allowed to age longer. The accepted term now is "reserve".
Late Bottled Vintage Port Wine (LBV)
- Late bottled vintage is made of wine from a single harvest, and has spent up to six years in the barrel. LBV port wine owes its existence to a sort of accident: if demand for a declared vintage falls below expectations, the makers may keep some of it in the barrels for longer than the standard two or three years. Unfiltered late bottled vintage port wine requires decanting.
Crusted Port Wine
- Another style which must be decanted is crusted port. This is a blend of several harvests, bottled unfiltered. The year on the label is the year of bottling. Some crusted ports are excellent.
Vintage Port Wine
- Which brings us to vintage port, the best port wine of all. Each year, port houses decide individually whether the harvest is good enough to deserve the accolade, with the major players generally making a declaration about one year in three. The wine is aged in the barrel for two or three years, then bottled unfiltered. It is not generally considered ready for drinking for some twenty years – a few bottles from two centuries ago still exist. It must of course be decanted.
There are one or two other styles of port, but these are the most familiar.
The Best Port Wine Etiquette
Port has quite a history, and connoisseurs observe a unique ritual. The decanter starts with the host, who fills the glass of the guest to his right, then passes the port to his left. So it goes on round the table. Bizarre as this may sound, the practice makes perfect sense, at least for the right-handed.
In the event that a guest is slow to pass on the decanter, it is not considered good form to be explicit about it. Instead, someone will ask if the defaulter is acquainted with the Bishop of Norwich. If – perhaps through ignorance – he fails to take the hint, then he will be informed that the Bishop is an admirable fellow, but very slow to pass the port.
There is even a decanter designed to ensure that the services of the maligned clergyman will not be required. The Hogget has a rounded base, so that it cannot be put down, but must be held in the hand until passed on.
Because what is port wine for? It's for drinking, not hogging.
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