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Taste Paul Gregutt

Sweets For The Sweet

In the storm of post-Valentine chocolate, try port

AT THE RISK of being Mr. Unpopular, I'm going to throw a little cold water on all the wine-and-chocolate hoopla that goes on around Valentine's Day. I'm not a believer in most wine "rules," but this is one you ignore at your palate's peril: For a wine to complement a dessert, and for the dessert to enhance the wine, the wine must be the sweeter of the two. A dry wine, such as cabernet, always loses the fight. All but the most bitter chocolate desserts strip away its fruit and rough up the tannins.

So what should you drink with that pile of leftover Valentine's chocolates? Port!

Port, being fortified, solves the problem in two ways. First, it has not been fermented to dryness, so it retains a fair amount of residual sugar. Second, it has had brandy added to it. So you have two things working for you, the liquor and the grape sugar. Both make the chocolate taste better.

The style of port that I absolutely love with many desserts (chocolate to be sure, but also crème brulée and anything built around nuts, toffee, butterscotch or caramel) is tawny port. Tawnies — also known as wood-aged ports — come in several styles.

Basic tawnies are pale in color, oak-aged for at least three years and ready to drink when released. Most are simple sipping wines, with light fruit flavors. Some good young tawnies are made by Calem, Delaforce, Fonseca, Niepoort, Osborne, Quinta do Noval, Ramos Pinto, Rocha and Taylor Fladgate. They generally sell for $10 to $15.

Far more impressive are the tawnies with an indication of age. These are numbered with a decade designation — 10, 20, 30 or 40 years old. The number represents the average length of time that the wine has supposedly been aged in cask, although the rules are quite lenient. But whether or not it is actually 10 years of age, a 10-year-old tawny from a reputable port producer can be a very fine bottle indeed.

Best of all are the vintage tawnies, usually labeled "Colheita" (pronounced cole-YAY-tuh). Not to be confused with vintage port. True vintage port, lovely though it is, will require considerable aging before being drunk. Vintage tawny — which will not actually say vintage but will show a specific year — is ready to drink upon release and will not improve further in the bottle.

These Colheitas are also the wine world's best gift to anyone celebrating a special birthday. Once you get up there into the 40th, 50th or 60th birthday range, finding any wine from your birth year that is still drinkable gets to be a challenge. An expensive challenge. Even a 30th birthday can be trouble, especially if your birth year happened to be an off vintage in the great wine regions.

But Colheitas are immune to such worries. If the bottle has a specific year indicated and the word Colheita on it, you're in business. The wine will be delicious, ready to drink and surprisingly affordable.

Wineworth, the country's largest importer of such wines, is in Bellevue — lucky us — and carries a tremendous assortment of ports. Anticipating some big birthday anniversaries in 2007, I find that they are offering some lovely Colheitas, many in half bottles.

In half bottles, you can find 1937 Rocha or Kopke (about $225); 1957 Rocha or Kopke (about $115); 1967 Rocha ($70); 1977 Barros ($50), and for those who are about to turn 21, 1986 Rocha ($22). Full-bottle prices are roughly double these quotes. Your wine seller will be able to order these for you directly from Wineworth (425-747-9241).

Older tawny ports offer a truly mouth-watering set of flavors. Stick with the 10- and 20-year-old tawnies and you'll hit the sweet spot: smooth, rich, buttery and nutty, yet retaining soft cherry fruit and cut tobacco-leaf flavors. They are not as dry and woody as most 30- and 40-year-old tawnies, and they are not nearly as expensive. Good 10s are made by Churchill's, Kopke, Rocha, Quinta do Noval, Warre's, Delaforce and Cockburn's, and sell in the $20-to-$30 range. Good 20s are made by Rocha, Delaforce, Fonseca, Graham's, Taylor Fladgate and Sandeman, and sell for $50 and up.

Like any ports, these are fortified and register around 20 percent alcohol. They are wines to sip, not gulp — even a half bottle will serve a dinner party of six. If you do not finish the bottle, no worries, mate. Once opened it will keep for a month or more when stored in any cool, dark cabinet.

Paul Gregutt writes the Wednesday wine column for The Seattle Times and covers Northwest wine for the Wine Enthusiast magazine. Write to him at wine@paulgregutt.com. Barry Wong is a Seattle-based freelance photographer. He can be reached at studio@barrywongphoto.com.

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