Week of November 12, 2009, Issue #734
DISH
Veni, Vidi, Vino
Sailing into port: New and Old World-style sticky wines please the palate
Jenn Fullford / jenn@vueweekly.com
Full-bodied, sticky-sweet with layers of richness revealing raisin, caramel, chocolate and nut flavours in every sip to warm any cold winter's eve. Drink with your favourite cheese, your family gathering over the holidays or simply in front of a warm fire. Ports are perfect winter wines with character and complexity all wrapped up in a single bottle, and hopefully under the tree.
First a few facts: port is fortified wine. To be classified as a fortified wine, a grape-based spirit, something like brandy or aquardiente, is added during the fermentation process to halt the fermentation. In most cases, residual sugar is left behind to be found as a lovely, sticky-sweetness swirling on your palate. Although more than 80 grape varietals are permitted for the production of port, only five are commonly used to make it. Tinta Roriz (Tempranillo), Touriga Nacional, Touriga Franca, Tinta Cao and Tinta Barroca are grown specifically in the Douro Valley in northern Portugal for making these blended wines. Wine estates, called quintas, have tightly controlled legislation on production and are given quotas as to how much volume they can produce which guarantees better quality.
A few basic tips: the style of the port will give you an idea of the flavour profile and general characteristics of the wine. Ruby, tawny and late bottle vintage (LBV) ports are popular styles on the market made ready-to-drink. Vintage ports are a style that need to be settled down in your cellar and forgotten about for a couple decades. As well, you may need to get that decanter out with traditional style LBVs and vintage ports, as they are unfiltered and will throw a heavy deposit of sediment.
On the lower price end are the ruby ports, which are primarily sold with less than three years of aging. These wines are sweet and simple, full-bodied and may have some harsh alcohol on the palate. A small step up in this category takes us to the Reserve Ruby wines, made from higher quality wine, which are fuller-bodied wines with richer fruit and cask-aged up to 5 years.
Tawny ports are probably the most popular on the market with a variety of styles within the category. Budget drinkers can pick up a good quality tawny for about $25. This is a blend of ruby and white port. Moving to the reserve category, we move into a softer and smoother product that has at least seven years of maturation in cask. The finest of all the tawnies are with age designation from 10 to over 40 years, with the older vintages running the pocket book over the hundred dollar mark. Characteristically, these wines are extremely complex and concentrated with aromas and flavours of walnuts, coffee, chocolate and caramel in addition to berry fruit notes developed through oxidative aging in the cask.
Colheitas are the syle of port the locals drink. They are tawny ports but differ in the aspect that all the wine is from the vintage stated on the bottle whereas tawny ports blend the vintages to make a product of the age designation. Aged in cask a minimum of eight years, these wines are dryer in style, ready to drink and price-wise a bargain: a 1977 Colheita willl go for around $100.
Traditional-style LBV ports are bottled after four years and are unfiltered, improving with age. Modern-style LBVs are filtered, aged six years and released ready to drink having rich fruit and complex flavours along with some grippy tannin. Port producers will usually have a philosophy on which style they prefer and will consistently produce either one style or the other. A step up in quality from ruby port, these are also a step up in price, starting around $30 on the shelf.
While LBVs can be released from any vintage, vintage ports are released only in exceptional growing years. There have only been 12 vintages in the last century. The young wine, over the slow aging process, will mellow from full, rich and tannic to smooth, complex and luscious. Buying a vintage port is not for the impatient, though, as they are known to reach their peak sometimes in 20 years or more and start around $80.
Portugal has the exclusive rights to call their fortified wine port, so New World nation labels will simply say fortified wine on the bottle. Similar to the Portuguese port style, South Africa, California, Australia and Canada are producing top-notch fortified wines using different grape varietals such as Shiraz and Muscat. Prices range from mid-20s to well over $100. One of the most unique products comes from a region in Australia called Rutherglen. They are producing Liquer Muscats and Liquer Tokays that have all the yummy characteristics of port. Intense and full-bodied, these sticky-sweet wines taste of raisins, apricots and prunes along with caramel, toffee nuts and coffee to add additional complexity.
A tip to take home with your bottle of deliciousness is that port is wine and it does oxidise. A general rule is that no port will maintain its freshness, full flavour and structure after one month, and the longer the port is aged, the more delicate it is and therefore should be drunk within a 24 – 72 hour time period after being opened. V
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