Make Mine Tawny

Vintage Ports take ages to mature,
but wood-aged Ports are always in bloom.

Richard L. Elia

Is mortality beginning to weigh heavily on your shoulders? Are all those things you were saving for another time, or all those you were going to do, or thought you were going to do, getting to you? Welcome to life.

But my oppression these days has little to do with life, existentialism, and meaning. It has, to put it brutally, everything to do with Port. My life has been a wasted attempt to catch everything “in bloom,” as the poet Housman put it. I have waited for wines to peak, and failed miserably at the timing. Either temptation was too great for this too pathetic flesh and the wine was opened too early, or it was opened too late, and well

Yes, trying to catch things in bloom: it’s my singular wine problem. Heidi, my analyst, says its guilt — classic wine collectors guilt: “You saw all those wine bottles you collected and said you were saving them but were actually eyeing, trying your human best to ignore them, and now late in life you feel guilty about missing out, about wasting dollars, desiring to embrace them, to open them. Worse, you’re hoping for their perfect maturity. You’re grieving. Collector’s guilt. It’s too late. It’s vanity. Get over it.”

Her words returned to me recently when an Alabama friend, knowing my passion for Port, generously sent me a 1963 Warre’s Port, one of the greatest vintages of the 20th century, from one of the greatest of producers. Most of my ’63s are gone — temptation was too great, and as usual I opened them around 25 years too soon. The 1963 Warre’s was nearly 45 years old. Perfect maturity awaited. We tasted; it was gorgeous, delicious, smooth, rounded, rich with flavors, but it was still too young, still evolving — after 45 years!

Then an epiphany, however belated, hit me: What the hell am I doing at my age searching for “things in bloom”? Wine won’t give it. It never does. Never mind wine critics who give “100 points.” It’s all rubbish. Wine is like a femme fatale whom you can experience, but only on her terms. She says enjoy what I give you. She may or may not give you more, and greed — viewing wine as a perfection object — is the one thing she despises.

Heidi and my concerned but less sophisticated wine friends brought me around. The therapy was simple: Tawny Port. They gave me a bottle of Warre’s Otima 20. While searching for great vintages (1963, 1966, 1977, 1994, 2000, 2005) and paying hefty prices, I was missing some of the most enjoyable Port around. “The simple things are often the best,” Heidi reminded me, and “simplicity,” she waxed philosophically, “can have its complexity, and complexity once understood is always simple.”

Rosemary George, Master of Wine, once said to me one of her “joys is Tawny port — and it shouldn’t be more than 20 years.” She was right. Tawny beyond 20 years is often affectation and, as Hugh Johnson reminds us in his Modern Encyclopedia, “the higher premium one pays for it is seldom worth it.” Tawnies include some of the greatest of the producer’s Ports and is made by blending a variety of these wines. Blending is always an art, and the result can be refined, intense, delicious, luscious.

Warre’s Otima 20 was just the thing: simplicity and complexity realized. Warre’s is the oldest Port house in Portugal, and its owners, the Symington family, are a part of Portuguese wine history. Warre’s has a reputation for producing Port with perfumed aromas, grip, and elegance, a winning combination. Ditto for the Otima 20. The Port trade created Tawny to broaden the perceived image of Port in more traditional markets, to give consumers a taste of its excellence. It is never to be confused with LBV (Late-Bottled Vintage), and is much more expensive.

The Otima 20 is ready to drink. It can be decanted and saved for weeks, if necessary, while retaining its flavors. It is sweet, but Port sweet, which is to say never cloyingly so. The sweetness has richness and delicacy; the color is copper/reddish indicating maturity; it has a nutty/almond note in the aroma. Balance is the thing with this wine: flavors are so well integrated that separating the parts from the whole is difficult. That’s what is meant by well balanced and well blended wine. And it has an affirmative finish that is head-nodding in its length. In a word, it’s fine Port — but for only $46 for a 500 ml bottle, not the $90 or more I was paying for current Vintage Port.

What does Tawny Port go with? In France, it is still used as an aperitif, however bourgeois that may sound. It’s often misused at dinners as a dessert wine. Port — Tawny or otherwise — “is” dessert, or perhaps a second dessert. There’s little sense in marrying sweet wine with a sweet dish. Enjoy them, but separately. The wine will love you for it.

If you’re still yearning for aged Port, the Otima 20 will oblige: it has enough tannin to develop for another few years. Is it necessary? It’s up to you. I’ve given up searching for things in full bloom. I said goodbye to all that. I’m accepting my mortality and getting a life.