03/13/07 Port

Welcome to Vine to Wine this is your host Linda Moran. Today we are going to take a closer look at one of the most popular and interesting fortified wines Port. During one of their famous feuds with France the British had obviously cut off their supply of wine and went looking elsewhere. In Portugal they found that if they fortified the wine with a little bit of brandy it insured the wine would withstand the shipping process. This is how the now famous wines initially became fortified. To accommodate the British palate and desire for sweeter wine, it was just a short while afterwards in which producers began using spirits to arrest the fermentation of the wine. The result was the sweet Port wine we are more familiar with today. There are many different styles of Port but the most well known are Ruby and Tawny. Ruby is young and made from the combination of many vintages of wine. It is usually aged in wood for three years prior to sale. But if the bottle reads Reserve or Special Reserve it has likely been aged longer and will be more expensive. The Tawny Ports are lighter wines that have been cask aged. They gain the lovely tawny or amber red color from long cask aging. Some of the best Tawny Ports are ten twenty thirty or forty years old Tawny. Meaning the Port is a blend of different vintages the average age of which is ten twenty thirty or forty years. Those are the Ports I seek out. Remember to send your wine questions to Linda at vine to wine dot net and thank you for joining me on today's Vine to Wine.