Drink an Aged Tawny Port before you die! Why?
They are a hedonistic treasure trove: alluring perfume, sensuous silky texture, and layer upon layer of elegant, complex, beguiling flavors. Plus, they're a real bargain!
These wines represent excellent value. If you paid to store wine this long the storage cost alone would be more than what you can buy a bottle for off the shelf. Aged Tawnies are matured for many years in oak barrels before being bottled. The age is indicated on the bottle usually 10, 20, 30 or 40 years. The 10-year-old Tawnies are good. But, for a bucket list wine I’d definitely recommend an Aged Tawny that's 20 years or older.
It’s during this long, slow maturation process that the magic happens. They take on an increasingly tawny color and become mellower, more complex and silkier in texture. With flavors of coffee, nuts, and dried fruits. They really are sublime.
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| Two Rabelos - traditional boats used to transport barrels of wine from the Douro Valley down to Villa Nova de Gaia | © bucketlist.wine |
Imagine the massive amount of stock these wineries have just quietly aging. It’s a huge undertaking. All that capital just tied up doing (seemingly) nothing. No wonder not many new players are getting into the game. And, no wonder the market is dominated by old family companies that have been at it for centuries. You definitely need a long-term view in this game.
When buying Port, always make sure it’s a proper Port. The name Port is the anglicized name of the old Portuguese town of Oporto from where the wines were originally shipped. Due to it’s huge success, people have been trying to replicate or make cheap imitations of Port since the early 1700s. This led to Port becoming one of the first (if not, the first) delimited wine region in the world with rules established to govern Port production in 1756.
As wine production moved to the New World, so did the imitations. With so called 'Port' being found in Australia, New Zealand, the USA, and South Africa. Some of these imitations are pretty good (and many no longer call themselves ‘Port’) but it’s always best to go for the original.