Wines for an Easter feast

If lamb is on the menu, rejoice, red wine fans, as there is nary a red wine that doesn’t go with this meat. If your joint is proper spring lamb, then stick to the lighter end of the scale with a Beaujolais or a juicy New World Pinot Noir.

Marius Michaud Moulin-à-Vent 2014, Beaujolais - £8.99 mix six price at Majestic

From one of the best Beaujolais crus, or villages, this is a lovely Spring-like wine with perfumed, juicy red fruit with a meat-friendly savoury finish.

Errazuriz Wild Ferment Pinot Noir 2013 - £13 from Morrison’s

Wild ferment means letting the naturally occurring yeasts on grape skins and in the air to ferment the grape juice into wine – the norm in Europe, but not so in the New World. This gives the wine more layers of flavour and complexity and, here, adds a layer of interest to the red fruit and clove spice.

Last year’s lamb, known as hogget, offers a fuller flavour and matches happily with all manner of full bodied reds. The French are brought up knowing that a gigot d’agneau should be served with a claret, preferably from the commune of Pauillac – and I am not about to contradict them. But you could also happily serve it with any full-bodied, savoury red from Bordeaux, Rioja, the Rhône and beyond.

Penfolds Bin 8 - £19.99 from Waitrose

I’m not a fan of naming wines by numbers, but I doubt my opinion counts for much, and it doesn’t seem to have done any harm to the fortunes of Penfolds – and in any case the wine itself is quite delicious. This is that quintessential Aussie blend of Shiraz and Cabernet that delivers plenty of rich, ripe blackcurrant fruit with a lovely herbal edge and proper tannic structure. It’s made for meat.

If you’re a white wine drinker only, look for something full flavoured and rich – so a white Burgundy or other oaked Chardonnay would work, as would a richer Chenin Blanc from either the Loire or South Africa.

Marques de Casa Concha Chardonnay 2013 - £8.50 at Asda, down from £12 to £9 until 12 April at Tesco

Don’t let the dull label put you off, this is a great buy at these prices. This Chardonnay, from the Concha y Toro stable, is from Chilean Chardonnay hot spot Limari and offers plenty of peachy, nutty flavour; the richness balanced with great acidity.

Cornelia Swartland White 2015 - £10 from Marks and Spencer

A Chenin Blanc dominant blend from South Africa’s arguably most exciting wine region, made by one of its most exciting winemakers. There’s lots going on here – it’s juicy, fruity, savoury and herbal.

Then comes the thorny question of wine and chocolate. If you’re tucking into a dark chocolate, high cocoa egg, you could try an LBV Port, or other fortified wine made in a similar way, such as Maury from Southwest France.

Taylor’s LBV 2010 - £15 from Asda, Sainsbury, Morrison’s, Waitrose and The Co-op

LBVs are a step up in quality and flavour from regular ruby Ports. They still have plenty of rich fruity flavour and some lip-smacking tannins, making them a good partner for dark chocolate, or for rich dark chocolate desserts, especially if there’s some red fruit in there too – Black Forest Gateau anyone?

If your tastes are for something made of milk chocolate, be it Dairy Milk or a Lindt bunny, I do hope it’s yours and not one that you’ve nicked from the children. And the best thing to drink with it? A cup of tea.

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!