Pullin In To Port

A little-known fact about St. Valentine is that he did not love the color pink. "Why does pink have to be the color of love?" he once complained to the New York Times in 1978. "It's only watered down red. You want passion? Give me crimson, give me vermillion." With regard to wine, St. Valentine wasn't opposed to rosé wines or pink Champagne. But on Feb. 14, the drink he preferred was port. Port, he always claimed, is much like love itself. Dense and spicy in its youth, port lightens in color as it matures, becoming more gentle in flavor while increasing exponentially in depth and complexity. And like so many affairs of the heart, port involves suffering. Not our suffering - the pain is endured by the grapes, particularly those grown along the perilously steep, almost vertical slopes of the Douro River in Portugal, whose roots must weave 20 to 30 feet through sheer rock to gather water, as no irrigation is permitted on mature vines. When I taste young vintage Porto, as Portuguese port is labeled, my tongue and nose can feel the rock and dust and taste the dark, rich fruit and black coffee and chocolate that has been baked into the grapes over the perilously hot, dry summers of interior Portugal. That's understanding port in the glass on a sensory level. More challenging is understanding the dizzying array of styles we see at our shops. Glance at a typical port display at your local shop, and you'll find port that goes for well over $100 a bottle. You will see less expensive but still pricey port in lighter bottles labeled "tawny" that boast 10, 20 or 30 years of aging or no aging at all. In the mid-range prices you will see ports called "late-bottled vintage," "Colheita" or "vintage character." And, finally, for very reasonable prices, you will see "ruby" ports. How to make sense out of all of these styles? First a note on how traditional Porto is made. The heat and aridity in which the grapes (indigenous varieties with such names as Tinta Roriz, Touriga Nacional and Tinta Francisca) are grown create extraordinarily concentrated fruit. Treading them for hours by foot in the lagar, the traditional vat, is still the world's best method for getting complete extraction from the skins. (The problem is that treaders are getting harder to find. This is why a big Porto-producing family like the Symingtons ‹ who own the Dow, Warre, Graham and Smith Woodhouse labels, among others ‹ have developed their mechanized grape crushers to mimic the action of human feet. Their "robotic lagars" actually tread up and down on the grape with artificial "feet" and humanlike rhythm.) Using such concentrated grapes mashed to a pulp by feet, a wine that would be fermented dry would almost be undrinkable - tannic, bitter, lacking in suppleness (it was called, appropriately, "blackstrap" in England during the 1600s). In the mid-17th century, the process by which modern port is made was discovered: Before fermentation is complete, a grape brandy is tossed into the mix, stopping fermentation while leaving some sugar in the juice. The sugar partially masks the tannins. Still, the wine would be too tough to drink without some aging to let the tannins drop out. So the various styles reflect the aging methods used to soften the wines, as well as the quality of the vineyards and grapes used to make the wines. All port can be divided into two categories: wood-aged and bottle-aged. However, because there's only one true bottle-aged version, vintage port, I prefer to look at the categories as wood ports and vintage/vintage-styled. Vintage port sits alone at the top of the heap, representing about two percent of all port made (hence the $100 price tags). Roughly three vintages are declared a decade, years when the grapes are of exceptional quality. Vintage port spends two years in a wood cask and then is bottled, where it is expected to keep for up to a century. Fiery and full when young, it ages slowly in the bottle and is generally considered approachable after, maybe, 20 years. Late-bottled vintage and vintage-character ports are made to mimic the intensity of vintage ports, but spend more years in wood, which allows them to be more approachable in their youth. I like this style for several reasons, but mainly because they are quite affordable and give a general impression of the vintage style. Of the wood ports, tawnies and rubies are the most common. The longer they spend in wood, the more they oxidize and thus soften. Tawny refers to the reddish-brown hue they take on through this process. The oxidation of these wines leaves less fruit flavor in favor of more caramel and nutty elements. I recommend the cheaper wines, especially the late-bottled vintages and tawnies, as an introduction. If you are determined to spend over $100 for a vintage port, I recommend spending a few dollars more to get an aged one. Most stores have 20- to 40-year-old bottles on hand for not much more money than an unready 2000 Port (the latest declared vintage). It's worth the extra bucks to get something a bit more mature. And strong wines demand strong foods. Try vintage port with Stilton or another blue cheese - a classic combination. Or, if you're so inclined, follow in St. Valentine's model. He could often be found enjoying a fat Honduran cigar with his vintage port on the balcony of his apartment in Florida after a big steak dinner every Feb. 14.