Port Land

Takes the edge off the chill

By TYLER BALLIET

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Since it'll be cold as hell for the next five months, we wanted to give you the lowdown on some vino that will warm your soul, from the inside out.

Port wine is a sweet, syrupy wine from Portugal that is "fortified" with brandy, giving that extra kick you'll need when Jack Frost nips at every part of your body.

We like to fill flasks with a nice Tawny for a pick-me-up during a winter's hike or skating session. It's also a classic pairing with cigars, so go Old World this winter with some of Portugal's finest.

A LITTLE HISTORY

Port wine was created out of necessity more than anything else. It's a fortified wine, which means that during the winemaking process—when yeast eats the sugars, converting them into delicious and intoxicating booze—winemakers spike it with brandy. This kills the yeast, which halts fermentation. The result is a sweet wine with a lot of sugar, but also high alcohol content.

The process was created to make the wines very resilient to drastic changes in temperature, constant shaking and exposure to oxygen, which comes in handy when you're a 17th-century British sailor. Regular wine, from France or Italy, would go bad very quickly, so Port wine soon became a favorite with the Brits.

In fact, the British set up the majority of the major wineries in Portugal, and many are still owned by them today. However, single-vineyards called quintas, owned and operated by the Portuguese people, are becoming more popular.

DECIPHERING THE LINGO

Vintage: This is the stuff everyone talks about and hoards in their cellar for decades. Vintage Port is special because it's not created every year. It's up to the winery to decide on what makes a vintage year, but they take the decision very seriously. Most Port wine producers declare three or four vintages per decade.

Late Bottled Vintage (LBV): Closed with a stopper, rather than a traditional cork, LBV Port is an easier-to-drink and less expensive version of Vintage Port. This style is filtered, which rounds the edges and makes it a wine that can be enjoyed today, instead of three decades from now.

Aged Tawny: The most popular and most widely available, this Port is made by blending multiple juices from multiple years, in massive barrels for 10, 20, 30 or 40 years. The barrels are open and exposed to the air. Because of the way it's made, Tawny Port does not age favorably after it gets bottled, so the sooner you drink it, the better.

Ruby: This is the youngest, sweetest and least expensive of all the styles of Port Wine. It's simple and fruity, essentially a scaled-down version of Tawny. While not bad by any means, this may not agree with manly, cigar-smoking types.

DRINK MORE WINE! FOR MORE INFORMATION: THESECONDGLASS.COM