Sweet wines (11): Port plus an intruder
For the last installment of our long overview of the world’s best sweet wines we look at the reinforced wine Port, or Porto, along with a formidable ‘intruder’: Pedro Ximenes Réserva 1946.
Port wines have an ancient history and are among those that age the longest and so it would be a crime to drink them too young because we would miss out on their complexity, nuances and expressive strength that only years in the bottle can bring out. For this reason we have limited ourselves above all to the great vintage Ports, those that are the most stimulating from a sensorial point of view as well as from a… cerebral one.
Vintage Port, especially those that are over 100 years old, is extremely complex, bold and structured and so they are easy to pair with any food. In a certain sense, it was a bit of a stretch to include them in this overview of sweet wines. They are ‘conversation pieces’ to savor on a winter’s night before a fire in the company of dear friends.
One last note. We tasted Ports that were over 100 years old that are near impossible to find in wine shops and some can only be acquired at auctions.