One of the great matches in the food and wine universe is port with Stilton, the English king of blue cheeses. Add a few walnuts (and a cigar if you’re so inclined), and you, too, can share the aristocratic magic of Downton Abbey — if only for an hour.
For those willing and able to plan ahead and spend a little time, port also figures in one of the great meat sauces. Depending on whether you fancy beef or pork, a port reduction offers many versatile options, with everything from pomegranate juice to dried cherries to enhance the sauce.
The initial thing to know about port is that it’s a fortified wine. This means what is essentially clear brandy is added to fermenting wine, which stops the process of converting sugar into alcohol. What remains is a sweet, high-alcohol (20 percent) product.
Port is divided into two types: cask- or bottle-aged.
Cask-aged ports (in ascending price order) include: Ruby (a dark, fruity non-vintage blend); Tawny (a light, delicate multiple vintage blend); Aged Tawny (which spends 10, 20, 30 or 40 years in cask); and Colheita (single vintage with a minimum of seven years in wood). Cask-aged ports are ready to drink when bottled and do not improve with age.
Bottle-aged ports, which mature with age: Late Bottled Vintage — LBV, for short (a single vintage, but lighter, lesser quality; bottled four to six years post-harvest); Vintage Character (blended from better vintages); Quinta (from a single farm, or quinta; not quite good enough for vintage designation, high-quality and worth aging); and, finally, Vintage Port.
Vintage port is made in peak years, usually one in every three. It’s created from only the finest grapes in a select blend, then bottled two years after harvest. However, since it’s relatively rare and produced in the best vintages, the upscale product is meant to be cellared for decades.
True port comes from the rugged Douro Valley in northern Portugal, where they’ve been shipping wines to England since the 17th century. In the 1800s, port (as we know it today) was created as vintners fortified their wines in preparation for the lengthy voyage. The Brits, who have long been port lovers, began a tradition of buying bottles of vintage port for a new baby, to be cellared until the child’s 21st birthday.
In a typical year, only 3 percent of port is given the vintage designation. Sixty percent is ruby and tawny, 30 percent vintage character and 7 percent aged tawny. The grapes used for port are local to Douro, though you’ll see fortified port-style wines made from familiar grapes across the globe.
Vintage port is the best match with Stilton, but a 10- or 20-year-old tawny is a great value. It’s smooth as silk and pairs beautifully with dark chocolate, dried fruit or nut desserts. If you’re an experienced baker, search for Maida Heatter’s chocolate walnut tart from Saint-Paul-de-Vence. It’s one of my favorites and a perfect tawny match.
This article appears in May 26 – Jun 2, 2016.