A big feature article in today's (Nov. 13, 2003) San Francisco
Chronicle on Port wines:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?
f=/c/a/2003/11/13/WIGEV2VJD31.DTL
<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?
f=/c/a/2003/11/13/WIGEV2VJD31.DTL
>

A port primer Ruby
Whether ruby, tawny or classic vintage, port is a sweet fortified
wine with a history as rich as its many personalities

Steve Pitcher, Special to The Chronicle Thursday, November 13,
2003
----------------------------------------------------------------------
--

Port is one of the very few good things ever to come out of warfare.

The origins of the trade in this sweet fortified wine date back to
the 17th century, when wars with France deprived the British and
Dutch of French wines and they were forced to find a new supply. The
Portuguese were more than willing to oblige.

The first recorded shipment of Vinho do Porto to England was in 1678,
but it wasn't until the mid-18th century that experimentation with
fortification began to stabilize the wines on their journey across
the sea, and it was at this point that modern port began to take form.

Port is extremely versatile, some might say bewilderingly so. It is
smooth and supple on the palate, a cornucopia of ripe fruit that's
sometimes bold and powerful, sometimes supremely elegant and refined,
sometimes a complex meld of the two. It's guiltless hedonism in a
bottle.

According to Portugal's Port Wine Institute, Americans are sixth in
worldwide consumption of all port, with 4.4 percent of the market and
402,000 cases a year. In first place -- ironically, given that they
were indirectly responsible for the English infatuation with port --
are the French, with 33 percent of the market (just over 3 million
cases, much of it consisting of white port and young tawnies, which
the French regard as perfect aperitifs), almost three times as much
as the British, followed by the Dutch at 20 percent and, in third
place, the British with 12 percent. In the high-end, premium port
market, ranging from reserve to vintage, Britain is the No. 1
importing nation with 27 percent of the world market (191,500 cases),
followed by the United States with 18 percent (128,000 cases), Canada
with 16 percent and France with 13 percent.

While many countries produce wine labeled as port, the genuine item
comes from the Douro Valley, a remote, mountainous region of steep,
hillside vineyards in northern Portugal east of Porto, the country's
second-largest city, from which the wine derives its name.

True port is made from among a dozen of the more than 30 approved
grape varieties grown within the official boundaries of the Douro and
seldom found elsewhere.

The varieties include Touriga Nacional, Tinta Barroca, Touriga
Francesa, Tinta Roriz (Spain's Tempranillo) and Tinto Cão.

The Douro became the world's first wine appellation when its
boundaries, and strict regulations to ensure the authenticity of
port, were officially set by the Portuguese in the mid-1700s.

Sometimes labeled porto, it is available as a vintage wine and as a
multivintage blend, wood aged or bottle aged, or a combination of
both.

It's always made from several grape varieties, sometimes from a
single vineyard, sometimes from several vineyards. It comes in a vast
array of styles

-- something for everyone and every budget.

There are ruby ports and tawny ports, tawnies with an indication of
age, reserve ports, late-bottled vintage, single quinta vintage and
colheita ports and even white port.

Port winemaking

Most harvesting in the 45,000 vineyards of the Douro is done by hand.
From the vineyard, the grapes are taken to the winery for pressing.
Traditionally, the fruit was crushed under the feet of workers, in a
rectangular granite or cement trough called a lagar. Today, most of
the crushing is done by robotic lagares equipped with rectangular-
shaped, silicon feet, and high-tech, computerized stainless steel
vats.

Once it gets to the fermentation stage, port goes through a process
that distinguishes it from table wine. All ports -- no matter the
style that eventually emerges in the bottle -- are fortified with the
addition of aguardente, a natural, distilled grape spirit with an
alcoholic strength of 77 percent. It's added before the wine has
fully fermented and normally when only half the natural grape sugars
have been converted into alcohol. This stops the fermentation,
preserving the wine's natural sugars and sweetness, but also
increases port's alcohol to almost double that of table wine --
between 19 and 22 percent.

Over the winter, young port is stored at the production site in large
casks made of oak or mahogany and is allowed to settle. The wines are
tasted out of cask to determine how they will be blended. Those
destined for aged tawnies are put into 145-gallon casks called pipes,
which allow the wines to mature to their characteristic orange-brown
(tawny) color.

In the spring following harvest, most of the port is transported to
the shippers' maturing warehouses in Vila Nova de Gaia, the center of
the port trade just across the mouth of the Douro River from Porto on
the Atlantic Coast.

Wine not shipped downriver is aged and bottled by some of the 28,000
independent growers for their own estate-bottled "Quinta Portos," a
relatively recent development in Portugal.

Famous port houses

Over the years, there has been considerable consolidation among the
companies constituting the port trade, most of which bear British
names because English families established the trade. The first
company was Warre, founded in Porto in 1670 and almost certainly the
oldest British firm outside the British Isles that is still trading
today, followed by Croft in 1678. Another venerable and greatly
respected house is George Sandeman, founded in 1790, followed by W. &
J. Graham in 1814 and Cockburn's in 1815.

Today, the Symington Family Port Companies are responsible for more
than 25 percent of the worldwide premium port trade, selling Warre's,
W. & J. Graham's, Dow's, Smith Woodhouse, Gould Campbell, Quarles
Harris, Quinta do Vesuvio or Quinta de Roriz, each with its own house
style.

The family firm of Taylor Fladgate includes in its portfolio not only
the well-known Taylor brand but also the famous Fonseca brand as well
as Croft and Delaforce. Sogrape, owned by the Portuguese Guedes
family, controls Ferreira and Offley, the No. 1 and No. 2 brands in
Portugal, and recently purchased the Sandeman brand from Seagram.
Cockburn's is now part of the Allied Domecq portfolio of wines.

Types and styles of port

There are two main types of port: bottle-aged ports, which are
blended and require several years of cellaring, and wood-aged ports,
which are ready to drink on release. There are different styles
available within each type.

Classic vintage port is at the top of the bottle-aged category,
ranking among the greatest wines produced anywhere in the world.
Accounting for less than 2 percent of all port shipments, it is made
only in years when the harvest is truly exceptional, which in the
Douro occurs on average three years in 10. Producers are always
meticulous about declaring a vintage, which requires the approval of
the Instituto do Vinho do Porto (IVP, or Port Wine Institute) in
Porto. Less than 10 percent of the total production from a declared
year will actually be bottled as vintage port.

The most recent declared port vintages are 1994 (the best of the
century, say many critics), 1995, 1997 and 2000. None of these
vintages is anywhere near ready to drink today, and will stay put for
20 to 25 years.

Vintage port is made from an extremely rigorous selection of the best
lots of wine from all the vineyards to which the producer has access.
It is bottled only two years after fermentation, and once bottled,
the aging process slows almost to a standstill, giving the young wine
time to develop into a mature vintage port, distinguished by
exquisite structure and balance, memorable richness and concentration
of flavor (luscious blackberry and black currant fruit, violets,
chocolate, walnuts and roasted coffee
bean) and a distinctive house style that the producer seeks to
replicate in such wines.

Classic vintage port is the ultimate collector's wine because it's
rare to begin with, requires careful storage for many years and not
only gets better after all that patient waiting, but also more
valuable.

A single quinta vintage port is the product of a single year and the
grapes of a single vineyard or estate (quinta), such as Quinta do
Noval. These ports are declared only in very good years (those
falling just short of the rigorous standards demanded of the classic
vintage), and normally mature more quickly than the multisource
vintage ports, usually displaying a strong, powerful style after 10
years in the cellar.

All vintage ports will throw a heavy deposit of natural sediments
after years of cellaring and should be decanted ahead of service.

Wood-aged ports

Wood-aged ports are blended wines that are aged in wooden casks for
their entire maturation period before being bottled. These ports can
be enjoyed the day they're brought home with no decanting. And while
most of them will stay sound in a properly stored, unopened bottle
for several years, they won't improve with cellaring. After opening
they have a "shelf life" of about a month under the stopper cork,
longer if gassed or vacuum pumped. In contrast, bottle-aged vintage
ports have a shelf life of only a week when recorked, after which
they become stale.

Rubies and tawnies

A tawny port is a fortified wine that has been aged in wood long
enough to lose some of its ruby color, hence the name tawny, which is
close to mahogany. Ruby ports are a blend of youthful wines selected
for their concentration and richness, whose basic characteristics
haven't been altered by long exposure to air through the wood of oak
aging casks, and which have retained their primary flavors and
intense fruit aromas. Both rubies and tawnies benefit from being
chilled when served.

Youth is the essence of a good ruby port. These young wines mature in
neutral oak or stainless steel from two to three years, giving them
the chance to assimilate the jolt of grape spirit added during
fermentation, but not to cast off their striking ruby-red color and
intense, red-fruit aromas of plums, strawberries and red apples. The
average among these wines are bolstered by blending with some older
wines, aging the blend a little longer and then bottled simply as
ruby port. Slightly higher in quality and price (still under $15) are
wines that are blended from finer lots and often labeled with
proprietary names, such as "Founders Reserve" from the house of
Sandeman, and Warre's "Warrior" ruby port.

Tawnies offer real value for the wine lover who craves richness and
depth of flavor at a reasonable price. At the basic level are wines
labeled simply as tawny port, which are aged not much longer than
ruby port and derive their lightness and elegance from having less
color extraction because of shorter skin-to-juice contact at the time
of fermentation, or by blending with white port.

Aged tawnies

Tawnies with an indication of age are prized by port lovers and by
the port shippers themselves. The age on the label -- 10, 20, 30 or
40 years --

is an average of the numerous lots of varying age that make up the
blend. Younger wines contribute vigor and freshness, while older
wines add complexity and breed. The aroma and flavor characteristics
are in the hands of a master blender who strives to create a wine
with a unique personality that is maintained year after year.

The front label must state the average age of the wine and indicate
that it was aged in cask. The year of bottling must be stated on
either the front or back label.

Aged tawnies range in price from around $25 for a 10-year-old to
about $150 for a 40-year-old from houses like W. & J. Graham, Taylor
and Sandeman, whose 40-year-old ($140) is an intense, rich, deeply
flavored wine with a bouquet suggesting vanilla, toasty oak and
honey, and complex flavors of dried fruits, spices and nutmeat. A
dated tawny of a single vintage -- called a colheita (Portuguese for
vintage, pronounced cole-YATE-ah) -- is by law at least 7 years old
at release, and the label must state both vintage and year of
bottling. Colheitas are the rarest of all ports, with production
amounting to less than 1 percent of all port made. They range widely
in price depending on the quality of the vintage. One example is the
1976 colheita from Smith Woodhouse, currently available in shops for
about $42.

Vintage character, or reserve

Wedged in between the tawny and ruby categories are the so-called
vintage- character ports. These wines, like tawnies, are blends of
several vintages, but the emphasis is on fruit and richness rather
than lightness and delicacy. They might be better characterized as
super or premium rubies. As of last year, new Porto regulations
require shippers to refrain from using the term vintage character for
this style of port, and to use instead the term reserve.

The grapes for vintage-character or reserve ports come from the best
properties in the Douro Valley. The top-ranked properties account for
about 18 percent of port production. Vintage port, late-bottled
vintage port, colheita and age-indicated tawnies absorb only about 6
percent of this. Most of the remaining 12 percent is used for vintage-
character or reserve port, making it the largest of the elite
categories. Most are priced under $20.

Some of the best examples have not used the now-scrapped term vintage
character on the label, including Fonseca Bin 27, W. & J. Graham's
Six Grapes, Cockburn's Special Reserve and Ramos-Pinto's Quinta da
Urtiga. Among those that have used the term are Calem's Vintage
Character, Churchill's Finest Vintage Character and Niepoort's
Vintage Character. These ports will have new labels in due course
reflecting the changeover to the "reserve" terminology.

Late-bottled vintage

Unlike vintage-character ports, which are not the product of a single
year or vintage, a late-bottled vintage port is a wine from a single
year's harvest from better vineyards, aged in cask for four to six
years and, for the most part, ready to drink on release. The label
must indicate both the year of harvest and the year the wine was
bottled, a consumer-friendly approach. These ports generally retail
in the $15 to $25 range.

Late-bottled vintage ports are made not every year, but more
frequently than declared-vintage ports and only from a single harvest
of good quality, as determined by the Port Wine Institute.

Less rich and concentrated than vintage port, they come from wine
lots that don't make the grade for vintage port, but still possess
character and flavor sufficient to work within the producer's house
style, offering fine aroma and vigorous flavor.

A late-bottled vintage port bottled with a regular cork may have some
sediment and should be decanted; if it's bottled with a stopper cork
that can be extracted by hand, it will be sediment free.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
--
Getting started with port

Look no further than the local supermarket or bottle shop to find a
wide selection at reasonable prices - most are under $20.

Start with a ruby or tawny to sip lightly chilled as an aperitif. A
reserve port, such as Graham's Six Grapes, can be enjoyed with hearty
dishes such as grilled peppered steak, and can complete the meal
served with a chocolate- based dessert or with blue cheese.

A late-bottled vintage port from Dow, Graham, Noval or Osborne, among
others, is equally serviceable.

Aged tawnies are quintessential sipping wines, available wherever
fine wines are sold. The same holds for vintage port and single-
quinta vintage port.

Steve Pitcher is a San Francisco wine writer and a contributing
editor of the Wine News. E-mail him at wine@....