Think of port and what image appears in your mind? Perhaps it's some variation on an elderly gent with a ruddy face, ensconced in a leather chair and delicately sipping a small glass of ruby-red liquid?
Worse, it might be the Dreaded Festive Season Port, that long-opened, dusty bottle that's dragged from the buffet every Christmas, offered around to successive shakes of the head, then put back into hibernation for another 12 months.
Ditch these images, say port's supporters. Port is an everyday drink, not just something to be produced on special occasions. (Advocates of sherry and champagne, other beverages often thought to be niche, say the same thing.)
Port is for everyone, not just old guys. Port is great with a wide range of food, not just with cliched matches like Stilton cheese and chocolate.
Port was all the talk at a recent tasting organized for Ottawa's Portuguese Wine Society by Tony Suarez at his Lisbon Bakery on Montreal Road.
He put together 40 ports in many different styles, from many port houses and several vintages, and paired them with a wide range of savoury and sweet dishes.
The result was a real treat for the taste buds. If you think of port as nothing more than a fairly viscous, very sweet drink, the thought of tasting 40 (even if you're spitting, as I was -- mostly) might sound appalling. But port covers a wide spectrum of colours, styles, textures and levels of sweetness, and the suggested food pairing rarely missed the mark.
We started with 10 white ports, which varied quite markedly in sweetness. A Burmester White port, for example, was quite dry and delivered not only sweet fruit but herbal and roasted nut flavours. It went well with shrimp in olive oil with a sprinkling of fleur de sel.
In fact, all the white ports worked well with salty dishes, whether it was fresh-roasted almonds sprinkled with salt, freshly shucked oysters with their briny water, smoked salmon or croquettes with cod and potato.
Clearly, a bottle of white port is a must in your beverage repertoire when you're serving a whole range of appetizers.
Onto the reds, which included ruby port, tawny ports, aged tawny ports (10 and 20 year), late bottled vintage ports from several years, a vintage port and a crusted port.
The rubies are generally what many people think of as port: sweet (but in a range of sweetness levels) with rich flavours of dark fruit and berries and hints of dried fruit and roasted nuts in the finish. We tried them with dishes like Stilton topped with walnuts, other rich, flavourful, dry cheeses and chocolate mousse topped with blackberries.
The late bottled vintage ports went with similar dishes, as did the Feist 1986 Colheita and a bottle of Churchill's Crusted Port, bottled in 1998. The crusted port was a big-flavoured Shiraz-type wine (you know, the kind of Shiraz that tastes like port) with a core of sweet dark fruit. As for the tawny and aged tawny ports, they were paired with intriguing dishes like liver pate on dried fig.
For the final flight we were back to white, with three Lagrima ports, very sweet and served with rich custard on puff pastry shells.
OK, so it was a pretty daunting lineup of ports and food, but it showed just how versatile and food-friendly port can be. Mr. Suarez said he put the tasting on because although people know port by house (Taylor Fladgate, Fonseca, Dow's, etc.), they don't know the styles nearly as well.
People think of port as a "sophisticated" drink, he says, whereas it's a wine you can easily entertain with and serve with a wide range of foods.
Maria Joao Boavida, a counsellor at the Embassy of Portugal, said she was happy to see so many ports, including some she didn't know, and to see them paired with not-so-traditional foods.
So, if you've got a bottle of port that's been open for years, throw it away before Christmas and get a new one. Better still, get a couple of different styles and pair them with different savoury and sweet dishes. White port is an excellent addition to table wines for parties where there's a good range of appetizers.
Four ports to start with. Look for others in the LCBO and Vintages, and keep an eye open for more in Vintages releases.