Wine Tributaries
by Tim Hayes & John Koetzner

     While only wines in Portugal may be called Porto (or what we affectionately call port), it has to do with geography, much in the same way that only wines produced in Champagne, France, are to be called champagne. Porto is a coastal city in the northern part of Portugal which is where the journey from the Douro River Valley ends at the Atlantic Ocean.

     One major distinction about port is that it is a fortified wine, having brandy or some other spirit added to it. This allows winemakers to stop the fermentation early, retaining residual sweetness in the wine, and it is also why the alcohol content will be considerably higher in the finished product, often ranging 21% to 22%.  However, not all port wines are sweet; many of the white ports are done in a very dry style.

     In fact, there are a number of port types. There are red and ruby ports which tend to be used as dessert wines and which are aged in wood. Tawny ports with age indication are aged in casks, and will have age designations indicating that they are 10, 20, 30, or 40 years old. These wines are used as aperitifs as well as dessert, and they are usually amber in color. For particularly good grape growing years, some ports from a single harvest will be given between two and three years in wood and then bottled. These vintage ports will continue bottle aging  until they are usually ten years old and some waiting twenty years for release.

     Just visiting the Instituto do Vinho do Porto will convince any traveler that the long wine history, dating back to the first century BC is still something that the Portuguese people are extremely proud of, and their wine industry was efficient enough to produce more than a million cases by the 17th century, most of it headed to England. Our whole local wine industry is in its infancy in Porto terms.

    Yet, locally we have a number of producers who make wines they call ports. Sommer Vineyards just released its 1997 Zinfandel Port this past week, while Lake Sonoma Winery has a 1996 Zinfandel Port available. Alderbrook Winery makes a solera-style port (a process that uses multiple vintages to create consistency) made from Zinfandel, Carignane, and Gamay grapes. A connection back to Portugal is Pedroncelli Winery’s port,  produced from vines which are taken from cuttings of four different Portuguese grape varietals. They currently have a 1995 Port released. An intriguing upcoming release is Trentadue Winery’s Chocolate Port which should be out this week.

     An alternative to the higher alcohol content in port-style wines is to seek out late harvest wines. These wines will usually have a few degrees of residual sweetness, and they often compete with their brethren port-style kin. Several producers locally also have these wines available, and they make a nice holiday accompaniment to dessert too. Hop Kiln’s 1997 Late Harvest Zinfandel is currently available at the winery and J. Fritz Winery also has a  1997 Late Harvest Zinfandel released currently. For those looking for a slightly older vintage, Johnson’s Alexander Valley Wines has a 1990 Late Harvest Zinfandel released.      So, if you can’t make a trip to Porto or Lisbon, we do have some local alternatives to those wines that are famous for their fortification.  We also have some nice alternatives to fortified wines that make a nice addition to dessert. However, if you do get to Lisbon, there is even an alternative to all those stairs; an electric tram makes the journey up and down the hill a couple blocks away. We found it on the way down.

© 1999 by Tim Hayes & John Koetzner. All Rights Reserved. Wine Tributaries is hosted by Wines on the Internet.