Port wine is a dessert wine, with dark red fruit flavors and sweet flavors of chocolate, caramel, and sometimes spice like cinnamon.
What is the difference between red wine and port wine?
Most port wine are blend of red wines, but port differs from other red wines because it is fortified wine, that is it’s a wine that has traditionally had additional alcohol added to the wine in an effort to prevent spoilage of the wine.
What are the different kinds of port wine?
There are three (3) main style classifications of port wine: vintage port, tawny port, and ruby port. In recent years, two (2) newer styles of port have become popular: white port and rosé port.
Most Ports are a blend of wines from several years, but vintage port is a blend of the highest quality wines of one vintage. These magnificent dessert wines are only produced in years that the Port houses declare worthy of vintage production, on average three or four years out of every decade.
Ruby Port is the freshest and least complex of fortified wines, deep red in color and filled with sweet flavors of red fruits. Ruby Port is made from wine produced from a blend of red grapes, fortified and aged no more than three years to maintain its fresh flavor and brilliant color. Enjoy Ruby Port as an aperitif or after-dinner drink.
Tawny Port, like Ruby Port, is made from a blend of red wines, but is exposed to a controlled amount of air while being aged in wood, so that it loses redness and oxidizes to a golden-to-brown hue. Aged Tawny Port – labeled by the number of years it has aged, typically from 10 to 30 but as high as 50 – is generally drier than younger Ports and has rich flavors of nuts and dried fruits. This fortified wine originated in Portugal, but is now produced in other winemaking regions, including California and Australia.
How do you drink port wine?
Some of the most popular Port Wine brands include:
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