Quick, how would you describe port wine in three words? Before hosting a port tasting party the other night, I would have said, “sweet, old-fashioned, and British” – and I would have been mostly wrong. The most fun way to learn about port is to drink it, so finish reading this article and gather together a few friends and a few bottles. The holidays are the perfect time for a tasting party.
A little background might make your tasting party a bit more interesting. Port is wine fortified with brandy or grape spirit, often resulting in an alcohol level of around 20 percent. Best known as a deep garnet or brick-red sweet dessert wine, it is also produced in a white or pink off-dry style for cocktails and apéritifs.
Unlike many other wines, it is not produced as a single varietal. Style variations are based on three things: how it is aged – either in the bottle or wood vats and casks; how long it is aged; and the winemaker’s skill at blending grape varietals. The result is three basic styles of port: bottle-aged vintage; wood-aged reserve or late-bottled vintage; and wood-aged tawny.
Port’s history goes back 335 years when a drink that would satisfy England’s tipplers was first imported from northeast Portugal by British-owned shippers bereft of trade-embargoed Bordeaux wine from France. Fortification began in the 1700s to ensure that the wine could make the arduous sail without spoiling. Britain drank the lion’s share of port production for many years, but nowadays France takes the lead, Britain has dropped to 5th place and the U.S. is nipping at its heels.
Today, more than 38,000 farmers grow port grape varietals like Touriga Nacional, Touriga Francesco, Tinta Roriz, Tinta Barroca and Tinto Cão on the steep rocky hillsides above the Douro River in Portugal. The fantastically, challenging terrain – in some areas, vine roots have to reach down 40 feet through rock fissures for moisture –has qualified some of the oldest vineyards, or quintas, to be classified as World Heritage sites. And many traditional practices live on: Hand-harvesting and traditional foot-crushing are still widely practiced by the best producers.
Vintage port is considered the rarest and finest of all ports. It is selected from a single exceptional year – only three years on average in a decade are declared “vintage” years by the industry body, Instituto do Vinho do Porto. Vintage port is typically aged 2 years before release, then cellared 15 years or more before it’s ready to drink.
The other classic style is tawny port, aged 10 to 40 years in wooden vats or casks and bottled when ready to drink. The creation of aged tawnies requires incredible blending skills and a great deal of patience on the part of the winemaker. David Guimaraens, head winemaker for Taylor Fladgate, Fonseca and Croft, is a sixth-generation family member of the Fonseca clan who described it best.
“The fact that we lose about 3 percent a year in ‘the angels’ share’ [what port winemakers call the wine’s natural evaporation] means that having one bottle of 20-year-old to sell in 20 years requires two now. There is simply no short cut. It takes 20 years to make a 20-year-old tawny,” Guimaraens said.
So port may seem pricey at first, but when you consider the effort that goes into making it, you may think of it as a bargain. The small harvest of 2011 declared vintage port is just hitting shelves now and availability is not expected to last long. So if you want to get your Christmas shopping done early, pick up a bottle of 2011 vintage today. It will make a killer hostess gift for another port tasting party in 2028.
Tasting Party Gear
In anticipation of my party, I asked everyone to bring one bottle and I stocked the table with an assortment of aged tawnies and a few newly released 2011 vintage ports from Taylor Fladgate, Fonseca and Croft, all venerable producers of the best classic port. We were lucky that one guest shared a bottle of 2007 Quinta do Vesuvio, the last time a vintage was declared in this decade. We started with interesting vertical tastings of each style and progressed across the horizontal range from aged tawnies to new vintage. No matter what styles you try, have a few things at hand:
- Tasting Notes Form – De Long Wine Company offers a great one free to download
- 3 stemware per person – white wine glasses work perfectly fine
- Wine aroma wheel – might help the tongued-tied with classic flavor descriptions
- Something to munch on – nuts or cheese
- Designated driver
Original publication Zester Daily, December 23, 2013
