Wine: Enjoying a festive port

Recently I gave over my column to the joys of sherry and wrote about how well it goes with food. This week it is the turn of port. Port and sherry are drinks we wrongly associate with Christmas when in fact they work all year round.

In September I visited the city of Porto and the spectacular Douro Valley which has to be a contender for most beautiful wine region in the world. It’s now a Unesco World Heritage site. I had two reasons to visit; an invite from arguably the best producer in the region Taylors (which also owns Croft and Fonseca), and to participate in the Port Wine Day celebrations. Port Wine Day included a magical tasting of around 40 wines from each year of the 1970s including many rarities.

Old port, whether tawny (aged in oak) or vintage (bottle-aged) develops levels of flavour and complexity to match any wine in the world yet costs a tenth of the price of fine Bordeaux. The aged Colheita tawnies, including some fascinating white ports, outshone many of the vintage styles.