What is Port?

Port is traditionally thought of as a sweet, rich, and red fortified wine. Port is made with distilled grape spirits exclusively in the Douro Valley in the northern provinces of Portugal. The distilled grape spirits lends to a richer, more alcoholic drink. While most people think of a sweet, dark, and rich, Ruby Port when they think of this Portuguese export, there are a few different styles of Port that vary within themselves available on the market today.

While Ruby is the most common style of port there are a multitude of ways Port is made that can be boiled down into four main categories:

• Ruby (Red) Port: a deeply-colored red Port which includes Vintage, Late-bottled Vintage (LBV), Crusted and Ruby Port
• Tawny Port: a very sweet barrel-aged port with oxidative nut and caramel flavors
• White Port: made with indigenous white grapes including Rabigato, Viosinho, Gouveio and Malvasia
• Rosé Port: This is a new style of Port wine made like rosé wine with flavors of strawberry, violets and caramel

While each style has a distinct flavor profile, there are flavors that are common throughout all port variations, like raspberry, blackberry, caramel, cinnamon and chocolate sauce.

These Port styles have variations within them as well, like aged and crusted version. Port is made traditionally from the manual labor of people stomping the grapes with their own feet. Most makers of Port use machine “stompers” these days.

A serving of Port is smaller than a normal glass of wine due to its sweetness and alcohol content. The average serving size of Port is about 3 ounce, and has a designated glass. Port is a frequent ingredient in cooking and can be used as the base for many sauces and glazes. When pairing food with port it is important to remember that port is a dessert wine. After dinner foods go well with Port like blue cheese. Port may be thought of as similar to a Madeira.

For more useful info see this helpful diagram (source: Winefolly.com):