Don't pass (by) the Port

If you’ve ever paid the slightest heed to what I write here, you’ll know I’m a big fan of fortified wines – those still largely unfashionable drinks Sherry, Port and Madeira, plus a myriad of variations on that theme from around the world.

Usually I include a recommendation for one or other of them for Christmas. But I’m trying to do them more justice this year by focusing on them alone, before they get overlooked in the festive frenzy. I’ll start with Port this week and move onto Sherry next time.

Terraced vineyards line the steep sides of the Douro Valley

Port – the bluffer’s guide

Port comes from the Douro valley, northern Portugal. Ripe grapes are harvested, then fermentation gets underway, with plenty of tannin and colour rapidly extracted either by means of foot-treading, or robotic machines doing the same job, or in a kind of mechanised tank.

Traditional stone "lagares" where grapes are foot trodden

The modern version with computer-controlled mechanical "feet"

Fermentation is brought to a premature halt by adding grape spirit; yeasts cannot exist in this high alcohol environment and die off. This results in an intensely fruity, deep purple liquid, quite high in alcohol and sugar.

Tasting Port in the Douro Valley

Different fates that now await the proto-Port:

• -      Wines destined to become vintage Port will spend the next couple of years in large oak barrels, before being bottled while still youthful, deep-coloured, strong and tannic. These Ports can age for decades and over time will become softer, more complex and somewhat lighter in colour. Very generally, this is the only form of Port which will improve with age in the bottle.
• -          Lighter bodied wines will have a brief period of wood maturation, before being bottled as ruby Port – the most basic (and cheapest) form of Port, and the kind of thing we all tend to buy a bottle of at Christmas. They retain a youthful deep purple colour, rich fruit and a spirity character.
• -          Still other wines will be given an extended period of wood ageing, sometimes up to 40 years or more, to produce a tawny Port. These are then bottled, most often as a blend with an average age, sometimes as a single vintage, or colheita Port. The wood ageing gives these Ports a lighter hue and a less winey flavour, with nuts, caramel and spice flavours coming to the fore.
• -          Late Bottled Vintage (LBV) is the product of a single harvest which, as its name suggests, has spent longer in wood (ie bottled later) than vintage Port. An innovation dating from the 1970s, they are not to be confused with true vintage Port, will not improve in bottle and tend towards the character of ruby Port, but with greater depth and complexity.

Ports for Christmas

A bottle of 2011 vintage Port from one of the great houses would make a fine present, but

Vines at Sandeman's Quinta do Seixo

has a long life in bottle ahead of it and shouldn’t be drunk now. For something to enjoy this Christmas search out a single quinta vintage, such as Sandeman’s Quinta do Seixo, Graham’s Quinta dos Malvedos or Taylor’s Quinta de Vargellas (around £30).

Tawny Ports are easy to find nowadays. Graham’s 10 year old (around £20 for a bottle) and Warre’s Otima 10 year old (around £10 for 50cl) are widely available (and generally on offer pre-Christmas). Reddish mahogany colour, with a slightly mellow, caramelly spiciness, a wee nip sitting by the fire (or radiator) on a dark November evening is comforting and warming. You can also try them chilled at the end of a meal.

Taylor's 20 Year Old - with Oporto in the background

If you get a taste for tawny, you’ll find more of what you like in the longer matured versions. I have a fondness for Taylor’s 20 year old (currently around £34 a bottle); Sandeman is renowned for the quality of its tawnies – Waitrose has its 20 year old for £37.50 (though currently on offer for £29.99). Ramos Pinto is a less familiar name, but well worth seeking out as they include small amounts of really old wines in their tawnies, giving great depth and complexity. Their 30 year old (£59.50 from thedrinkshop.co.uk) should give you an idea.

Vintage Port - it pays to know your history

I’ve been lucky enough recently to taste my way through quite a few Vintage Ports, which allowed me to have a metaphorical rootle around in the historical files of some of the grandest names in the Port world.

Sandeman hosted a tasting of twenty of their Vintage Ports from 1944 to 2011, giving a rare (for me at any rate) chance to taste mature Port and to witness its transformation from the intensely coloured and flavoured 2011s, which it would surely be a crime to think of drinking any time in the next ten years; to the delicate, ethereal 1944.

Every Port fan would probably have had their particular favourites in the line-up on offer. But what other style of wine would give you the chance to weigh the relative merits of the still sweet and weighty 1955 with the nutty, tangy and delicately floral and spicy 1966?

All very well for you, I hear you cry, you wine trade soaks are always being plied with line-ups of old, rare wines that the rest of us could never afford, let alone have access to.

Well, if you fancy letting your tastebuds roam over these same Ports….read on.

Of course in each case I was tasting the final version of the Port, which, although it is the product of a single year, will always be made of a particular blend of a selection of the many grape varieties which grow in Portugal’s Douro Valley, whence Port comes.

David Guimaraens, head of winemaking for The Fladgate Partnership, which includes Taylor’s, Fonseca and Croft, let members of the wine trade have a little peek into the work of the Port winemaker and to get our noses into glasses of the single varieties that make up the final blend.

Portugal’s long history of wine-making and relative isolation for most of that time has led to it being host to a treasure trove of unique indigenous grape varieties.

Perhaps foremost amongst these varieties is Touriga Nacional, whose annoying habits of low yields and haphazard growth are tolerated because it makes such fantastic, aromatic, fruity and structured Port. Also in the equation are Touriga Francesa (meaning French Touriga – it is indeed a cross of Touriga Nacional and another variety, but may have nothing to do with France), Tinta Roriz (aka Tempranillo), Tinta Barroca, Tinta Cao and Tinta Amarela.

Our treat was to taste a “Port” made from each of these single varieties – such a thing could never be unleashed on the public as Port cannot legally be made from a single variety. While each variety had its good points, it became clear that together these varieties could become something that was more than the sum of its parts.

All those varieties beginning with T are the predominant grapes which account for the majority of any Port blend, but they will usually be joined by other, even more esoteric native varieties, which also play their part in adding a nuance of flavour. Other than Tinta Roriz, which, as Tempranillo, is grown all over the Iberian peninsula, all of these varieties are uniquely Portuguese and play a huge part in creating the unique character of Port – including, of course, Vintage Port.

If you have a generous friend with a love of Port and, ideally, an important birthday or anniversary associated with a year since 1944, then let them know that you’d be delighted to accompany them to taste Port from their special year at a wine bar in the City. A limited number of bottles of Sandeman Vintage Port from selected years since 1994 have been shipped over from Portugal for us to enjoy here.

Usually, drinking Vintage Port means you have to first decant it, then find enough similarly inclined friends to make it worth opening the bottle, as you need to treat it like a wine and finish it in one or two days.

But for now, if you visit The Sign of the Don in the City, once the cellars of Sandeman in London, now a wine bar and bistro, you can get a taste of twenty different Sandeman Vintage Ports going back to 1944. Thanks to the wonder of enomatic machines, individual pours of each wine are available. Prices start at £5 for a 25ml sample of the younger Ports, up to £1,243 for a bottle of the 1944. Alternatively you can choose from a variety of flights, featuring 25ml measures of three or more Ports, starting at £16 for the “Youngster”, going up to £52 for the “Ancestral”.

If you do visit, I would love to know how you get on!

Dew drops on roses and whiskers on kittens? These are a few of my favourite (sweet) things

As well as drinking more and, generally, better wines than we do for the rest of the year, Christmas is also traditionally a time when, for reasons best known to ourselves, we decide that a bottle of some luridly-coloured liqueur will be just the thing to make the festive season go with a swing.

Oh the bottles of fluorescent green Midori or sickly Chartreuse that must be languishing at the back of cupboards since someone last touched them, sometime in the 1980s. Only undiscriminating underage drinkers or last gasp partygoers searching for the final drop of alcohol in the house at 5am would surely submit to them now.  Or am I tarring you all with the brush of my own experiences?

While the word liqueur can be used to cover a multitude of sickly sweet sins, there are drinks that can be sugary without being saccharine.

Vedrenne’s Supercassis Crème de Cassis (£8.50 from Waitrose for a 50cl bottle)

This is what Ribena really ought to taste like.  Bursting with true blackcurrant aromas and with a lusciously sweet palate of lingering fruit flavours, it’s the liqueur drinker’s liqueur.  Crème de cassis is traditionally used to perk up a very ordinary dry white wine, to make Kir – or Kir Royale if you are using sparkling wine.  A little cassis goes a long way and just a dribble should give you enough blackcurrant flavour to balance out the dryness and acidity of the wine.  Too much and you will end up with wine-flavoured squash.

If you ever come across a bottle of Crème de Cassis’ sister liqueur, Crème de Mûre, made from blackberries, then snap it up.  The more musky aromas make for an intriguing twist on Kir.  And incidentally both these liqueurs make great flavourings for anyone trying their hand at homemade chocolate truffles this Christmas – but make sure the kids keep their mits off them!

Port and Sherry

There are some things that I will never be old enough for:  shopping in Country Casuals or seriously considering a cruise holiday spring to mind.  Drinking these styles of fortified wines seems to be something we only adopt in our later years.  The average age of the UK Sherry or Port drinker remains stubbornly high, but I’ve been an out and proud fan of them for many years.

Gonzalez Byass Matusalem Oloroso Dulce – around £18 for a half bottle from Waitrose, Majestic, selected Tesco’s and various independents

Dry sherries are having a bit of a moment, to use frightful mediaspeak.  The sweet ones, though, are unfairly viewed as practically toxic and fit only for the cooking, or unfavoured relatives. 

I urge you to surrender to the unctuous charms of this fine example of lusciously sweet Oloroso.  This spicy, treacly, umami-rich mouthful is the essence of Christmas, in a glass.

For eleven and a half months of the year, nary a drop of Port passes our lips.  But, come the latter half of December, we go mad for the stuff.  Christmas isn’t Christmas without a bottle of Port in the house.

The biggest selling style in the UK is the most basic, ruby Port – though the Port producers tend to dress them up with names like Special Reserve.  This is fine for a quick snifter, or wicked (in more ways than one) in mulled wine, but for something to linger over I’d recommend searching out a Tawny Port.

Tawnies spend more of their life in barrel than other kinds of Port and, as a result, lose that dense purple colour and take on shades of mahogany and chestnut brown.  The flavours change too:  nuts, spices and preserved fruit come to the fore.  The most readily available style is 10 year old, which is an average age of the wines in the blend.

Taylor’s 10 Year Old Tawny – widely available from £22 a bottle

Taylor’s could be regarded as the most conservative Port house, as they alone among the Port shippers have held out against the trend of making still table wines from the famous Port-producing vineyards in Portugal’s Douro Valley.  They prefer to stick to what they know and do best and this 10 year old is a great advertisement for the style. 

Aromas of spice, glacé and morello cherry greet you, with nuts joining the party on the palate.  The preserved fruit flavours last in the mouth, with the alcohol (it is fortified, so 20%) providing mellow warmth.

Warre’s Otima 10 Year Old Tawny – widely available, but currently £10 for a 50cl bottle in Waitrose

This is a complete contrast in packaging and approach: a tall, clear glass bottle and an encouragement to serve it chilled – even over ice.

Serving it cool lessens the sense of sweetness and makes it a refreshing after dinner choice.

Wine-based drinks

I am, I admit, generally rather sniffy about ready mixed drinks involving wine.  Whoever thought up the idea of selling ready mixed Buck’s Fizz had clearly decided this was more profitable than their previous business peddling snake oil.  Come on people!  It’s cheap fizzy wine and orange juice, mixed – how hard can it be, even sleep deprived and hungover on Christmas morning?  A bottle of cheap Cava and really good orange juice are easy to find and infinitely more delicious than the sickly sweet ready mixed supermarket stuff that I’ve tried.  And don’t go kidding yourself that pre-mixed versions constitute one of your five a day either.

Sainsbury’s Williams Pear Fizz - £3.99

Like all zealots, there had to come a moment when my belief that pre-mixed drinks are evil stuff would be challenged.  Despite myself, I was won over by this spooky-sounding “aromatised wine cocktail”.  This mixture of Chenin Blanc wine and Williams pear juice is fun, sweet, fizzy, bursting with really pear-y pear fruit and is just 4% alcohol.  How can you resist?

Next time – normal service will be resumed and I’ll get back to recommending wines for the festive period.

Easter, chocolate and wine

Easter comes round again and with it the foremost question exercising the minds of epicureans everywhere: is there a wine that goes with an Easter egg?

Some bright sparks have taken the idea of wine and chocolate matching what you might consider a step too far: instead of packaging together a bottle of wine and some chocolates, they've cut out the middle man and just gone and put the chocolate flavouring directly into the wine.

The “wines” in question are designed to accompany chocolate-based desserts, apparently. Now I enjoy Boeuf Bourgignon – but, ye gads, I don't want the flavour of the meaty stew actually in the glass of wine I'm having with it. Call me old fashioned, but I'd rather my wine tasted of wine and my meat of meat. Whatever next? Festive wine with a hint of roast turkey, complete with sage and onion stuffing?

If I want to find a wine to sip while I guzzle my Easter egg, I'll choose one that naturally complements the flavours of what I'm eating. And what would that be?

After some exhaustive tasting, I have gleaned the following:

Really sweet milk chocolate – it's very hard to find any wine sweet enough to combat the sheer amount of sugar and mouth coating fat in traditional “English” milk chocolate. The closest I found to a match was a rich old Oloroso sherry, which has enough weight and density to stand up to it – just. Your best bet though is a good cup of tea with your Cadbury's egg.

Good quality dark chocolate – this is a much more forgiving beast for wines. Again the Oloroso would be a good choice, though I really enjoyed a 10-year old Tawny Port with a dark chocolate infused with orange oil and spice. Lovers of Green & Black's Easter eggs take note.

Chocolate cake – so much depends on what you put on the cake, as well as in it. If you have slathered the cake in a mountain of chocolate butter cream, cupcake style, then a cup of tea is probably the safest choice. If your cake is altogether less sweet, with more bitter dark chocolate flavour, then the fortified wines again come into play. I found the Oloroso just a bit better balanced than the Tawny Port with the substance of the cake.

The wines that I was tasting were:

Quinta do Infantado 10 year old Tawny Port - £12.99 for a half bottle (case price) from The Wine Reserve in Cobham

Tawny ports are, you guessed it, tawny coloured, due to long ageing in barrel. As well as changing colour, this style of port also takes on lovely caramel and nutty flavours as it ages, making it a great match for chocolatey things.

The Wine Society's Exhibition Viejo Oloroso Dulce Sherry - £10.75 for a full size bottle from The Wine Society

Dry sherries are starting to gain something of a following, thanks in part to the hip tapas and sherry bars that are starting to pop up, at least in London. Sweet ones, though, are still very much looked down upon, hence this bargain price for what it a very classy drink. To be classed as Old (Viejo), the sherry must have aged for 20 years. In that time it has gained additional weight and flavours: nuts, figs, raisins, coffee – this is one of those wines that evolve in the glass and you find something different every time you sip it. Sugar levels are not for the calorie-conscious, but a little goes a long way.

Other than a choc fest, Easter is also associated with a sit down family feast. The meat of choice at this time of year seems to be lamb which, I am pleased to report, is a most wine-friendly animal.

If you have forked out for some of the first Spring lamb, you don't want to overwhelm its delicacy with a wine that is too assertive. Good options here would be either Pinot Noir or a Beaujolais, which both have plenty of juicy red fruit and little in the way of tannin. Or even a dry rosé would work.

Martinborough Vineyards Te Tera Pinot Noir 2010 – £13.50 from The Wine Society

Burgundy is of course the home of Pinot Noir, but it's hard to find a worthwhile wine for under twenty quid in the best known areas. A better strategy is to search out something from the lesser known bits of Burgundy like Givry and Mercurey. Or you could look further afield and try this New Zealander: this has plenty of juicy red fruit with some clove-y spice.

Older lamb, and especially year-old animals known as hogget, which are halfway to becoming mutton, have much more robust flavours and can stand a more full-bodied wine to go with.

The French would tell you that roast lamb should be served with a claret – specifically one from the commune of Pauillac, and I am not about to contradict them. One from the 2004 vintage, if you can get one, would be perfect now. If not, don't worry, almost any full-flavoured red wine will do.

Scala Dei Prior 2008 - £18.49 from Wine Rack

Try this one with your roast lamb with rosemary and garlic. The name has religious overtones: Scala Dei means the ladder of God, or Stairway to Heaven perhaps, if you're a Led Zeppelin fan. The blend of grapes here, Grenache, Carignan, Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah, might sound more southern French than Spanish, but this wine from the Catalonian region of Priorat has a distinctly Iberian flavour. At 14.5% alcohol the liquorice-tinged, inky fruit packs a punch, but there's also a delicious, tangy freshness that makes it eminently food friendly.

2011 review: my best bits

If you're feverishly searching for last minute Christmas wine recommendations – and you really are cutting it fine – then please have a look at my previous two posts on this blog.

In the caring sharing spirit of Christmas, I offer here just one nugget that could save your bacon. If you seek the perfect wine match for Christmas pudding, then look no further than Moscatel de Valencia, a ridiculously under-priced dessert wine from Spain. Its luscious sweetness with an orange marmelade edge makes the pudding sing. Sainsburys' version is just £3.98 a bottle. If you're quick you might just make it...

This column is devoted to a review of the best bits of 2011. Here, in no particular order, are my personal highlights of the year:

• Tasting top class Aussie Rieslings courtesy of Jacob's Creek at “wine workshop and kitchen” 28-50 in London. The 2005 Steingarten Riesling was the highlight, but Jacob's Creek Riesling Reserve 2010 was pretty delicious too: fresh and lively (and limey), floral but dry – a great palate cleanser.
  
  
• A Bollinger Grande Année masterclass, with chef de cave Mathieu Kaufmann, where I learned that I have expensive tastes when it comes to Champagne. Bollinger Grande Année Rose 1996 was my favourite, if you're reading this, Santa. Completely beguiling, luxurious stuff which, sadly, I can't afford.
  
  
• Marcelo Retamel, Chilean winemaker (at the family-owned De Martino winery) and Iron Maiden fan, describing his return from the Dark Side of wine-making. Tasting the first vintage (another 1996) of his single vineyard Carmenère was a delicious reminder of how good wine can be when allowed to mature without the added glitz of selected yeasts, new oak and other winemaking frippery. Look out for the 2010 vintage of the Alto de Piedras Carmenère when it arrives at the Wine Society, which marks his return to the more natural style of winemaking that characterised that first vintage back in 1996. 
   
• I can't honestly remember what the exact bottle was, but drinking fizz in spring sunshine at our Royal Wedding street party felt both modern and traditional at the same time.
  
  
• Meeting Chester Osborn, legendary Australian winemaker at d'Arenberg and infamous wearer of loud shirts, and his collection of wine-themed fluffy toys at a wine “speed tasting”. His Money Spider Roussanne 2009 was one of my favourites at the whistle-stop tasting.
  
  
  
  
  
• Tasting Tio Pepe “en rama” at Bar Pepito in King's Cross (a must for sherry lovers) and then seeing how well it stood up to their excellent range of tapas. The summer weather may have been a let-down, but that day was a true taste of the Mediterranean. “En rama” is a special, full-flavoured, unfiltered bottling of Tio Pepe that sells out (mostly to those in the know in the wine trade) almost as soon as it hits these shores. The classic Tio Pepe, however, is widely available for around a tenner.
  
  
• Getting to grips with the new face of Portugal's Vinho Verde at a fascinating tasting this summer. I learned that Vinho Verde is not green and doesn't have to be redolent of soluble aspirin – and it can also be red! 
   
• Buying an exotic-looking liqueur in France over the summer, only to find it was none other than that British Christmas stalwart, sloe gin. Equally nice served cold in the summer, I can helpfully tell you.
  
  
• Spending three footsore days working at the London wine trade's annual fair in May – but my reward was to be responsible for encouraging visitors to taste a great selection of interesting, individual and delicious wines from Southwest France.
  
  
  
• The taste of Graham's Malvedos 1958 single quinta port – still looking and tasting good at 50!
  
  
• Tasting Zind-Humbrecht's Rangen de Thann Clos-Saint-Urbain Gewurztraminer 2009 at the first dedicated biodynamic wine tasting in London in November. Olivier Humbrecht (Master of Wine and PhD) has managed to create a perfect marriage of grape variety to terroir making for an unforgettable wine experience.
  
  
  
  
  
• Seeing how Hunter Valley Semillon ages (well, it turns out) courtesy of a vertical tasting of Neil McGuigan's Bin 9000 Semillons back to 1997.
  
  
  
  
  
• Drinking nothing but Champagne for 3 days (OK and some water) during my first study tour of the region.

Life could be worse! Wishing you a suitably merry time over the next couple of weeks. See you all in 2012.

Wines that look good at fifty

How many wines will happily last for over 50 years? You might think of the best Bordeaux classed growths, possibly the very top of Sauternes and really top class dessert wines.

If I add a qualifier – how many wines that you can buy for under £30 will happily last for over 50 years – and out go Bordeaux and Sauternes for sure. Now you need to turn to those great stalwarts of longevity: Sherry, Madeira – and Port.

Before you get too excited, that bottle of Cockburn's Special Reserve or Warre's Warrior that you snapped up for under a tenner last Christmas but never got round to drinking, is not going to last that long. Those ruby ports are designed for early drinking and are not going to improve in the bottle. It is the great vintage Ports from the major shippers like Taylor's, Dow's or Graham's which are renowned for their ageing ability, measured in decades rather than years.

It was the English aristocracy's habit to lay down a “pipe” (a port barrel, containing 55 dozen bottles) of vintage port from the birth year of their sons, so that their offspring would have sufficient to pass round after dinner from their 21^st birthday on for most, if not all, of their adult life. With drinking habits like that, it comes as a surprise that the English aristocracy haven't pickled themselves into extinction.

If you fancy taking up where they left off, albeit on a more modest scale, a bottle of top quality vintage port will set you back upwards of around £60. So what happened to the £30 I drew you in with at the beginning? I'm getting to that.

The port houses decide whether a particular year will be “declared” a vintage, based on the quality of the wines made. In theory each producer makes their decision individually, but in practice there are certain years which most agree that the quality is high and there will be a “general declaration”.

Weather conditions in the Douro Valley, where Port is made, are notoriously harsh, with cold winters and blistering hot summers. The risk of drought is ever present and rain at harvest can be disastrous for quality. It is certainly not a foregone conclusion that great wine can be made each year.

Additionally, from a commercial perspective it would devalue the vintage Port brand if a house were to declare a vintage every single year. In the past decade the years 2000, 2003 and 2007 have all been declared. This means that there is no Taylor's 2004 vintage Port, for example, it does not exist.

Which is where bargain-hunting vintage Port lovers come in. In those non declared years, port houses will still make a style of vintage Port known as single quinta. A quinta is simply the Portuguese word for farm and refers to a particular vineyard. To those in the know, names such as Taylor's Quinta de Vargellas, Graham's Quinta dos Malvedos and Warre's Quinta do Bomfim are bywords for high quality vintage Port, without, perhaps the huge staying power of the very top vintages.

In a declared year, these quintas will be responsible for providing key components of a house's vintage Port. In non declared years, they are bottled under the name of the Quinta and can be yours for somewhere under £30.

One hell of a tea trolley

The generally accepted wisdom on single quintas is that they are ready to drink earlier than their straight vintage counterparts, and will not age much beyond 10-15 years. Based on a tasting of Symington family single quinta Ports going back to 1950, however, this might not necessarily be the case.

The Symingtons are one of those Anglo-Portuguese port families who remain staunchly English, despite spending all their working lives in the Douro Valley. The family has been producing port for five generations and is responsible for some of the biggest names in the port business: Graham's, Cockburn's, Dow's and Warre's.

The Graham's Quinta dos Malvedos 1950 might be more of an interesting experience than a classically enjoyable glass of Port, with its hauntingly ethereal floral perfume and hint of balsamic vinegar and even stout (as in Guinness) flavours.

The Malvedos 1958, however, would make an elegent ending to any meal. It is still sweet and richly flavoured with caramel and nuts, the structure has endured and the finish is incredibly long. How many of us would like to aspire to be in such fine form at 54 years of age!

Unless you have some of these wines already stashed away, I'm afraid you won't get the chance to try them, as literally just a few bottles remain. The currently available vintage for most single quintas is 1999, though you'll find a peppering of other years too. Here are my recommended ones to search out:

Graham's Quinta dos Malvedos 1999 - £30.56 (case price) from Imbibros near Godalming

This is beautifully perfumed, incredibly rich and sweet. There are flavours and aromas of pipe tobacco and sweet spiced cherry. Malvedos is famous for producing opulent, sweet ports and this certainly fits that profile. The sweetness would make it a great match for desserts – sticky toffee pudding or crème brûlée could be naughty but nice.

Dow's Quinta do Bomfim 1999 - £26.50 from Tesco, £26.96 (case price) Imbibros

Barely five miles from Malvedos, but a world away from it in style, Bomfim is renowned for its drier, more tannic and austere style. This one is rather more “winey” and with a less spirity nose than the Malvedos with lovely leafy notes. It is lighter bodied with more lifted aromas. Great on its own, but this would make a wonderful to finish a meal along with some nuts – and maybe a cigar, if that's your thing.

Cavadinha 1996 - £30 from Waitrose, £29.66 (case price) from Imbibros

Cavadinha produces wines that have a distinctive and attractive floral character on the nose. The palate has plenty of sweet, figgy fruit, with a savoury undertow and a nicely elegant finish.

"You'd have to be an idiot not to make great wine in 2011."

Finally, a word to the wise. Paul Symington is seriously excited about the quality of the just completed harvest and says that “You'd have to be an idiot not to make great wine in 2011.” Will this be the first vintage declaration of the new decade? You heard it here first.

Cavadinha 2011 - vintage in the making?

You can follow the progress of the 2011 ports in the making and get lots of in-depth information about the Symingtons via their blog, http://malvedos.wordpress.com/