Know your Port: a quick guide to fortified wine:

Port is a fortified wine made in the Douro Valley; spirit is added during the wine-making process to stop the fermentation, leaving residual sweetness in the Port, and adding alcoholic strength. The grapes are a blend of local Portuguese varieties. Most are red and long-aged in wooden casks.

 

TYPES:

 

Ruby: inexpensive red port bottled relatively young after two or three years in wood.

Late Bottled Vintage (LBV): wine from a single year bottled after five or six years in cask and ready to drink on release.

Single Quinta Vintage: port from the grapes of one estate only and made from one year’s harvest. They are often made by port producers in years which have not been “declared” for a classic vintage

 

Vintage: Only about three harvests per decade are declared good enough to be a classic vintage. The best fruit from the best vineyards generally goes into these complex and rich wines. They are aged for only two years in barrel, are not filtered and may need ageing for many years until they mellow.

 

Tawny: Port aged for a notably long time in barrel until it becomes amber-hued, smooth, and nutty in flavour. Aged tawny comes in 10, 20, 30 and 40-year-old styles. A Colheita (or Single Harvest) is a port from one year that has been aged as a tawny.

 

White and Rosé: White port is enjoyed as an apéritif in Portugal, either chilled and neat or topped up with cold tonic and ice, usually served with salted almonds. Rosé or pink port is a refreshing modern alternative, mixed with cold tonic, soda water or, for a sweeter long drink, lemonade or used as an ingredient in cocktails.