‘Like Barbours and James Blunt, Port is finally becoming cool’

Let’s play a game — what comes to mind when you hear the word ‘Port’? I’ll go first: Stilton, Christmas, Georgian fops, Pall Mall, red trousers, red faces, parliamentary select committee hearings into your financial irregularities. Definitely not a natural wine bar.

But like Barbours and James Blunt, something long considered terminally unchic is enjoying a reappraisal. At Mount St. Restaurant in Mayfair, alongside the obligatory martinis there’s a whole section of the drinks list entitled ‘Sticky Wine and Port’. The Cotswold Port Co has sold out of limited-edition bottlings including Graham's ‘youthful, approachable’ Six Grapes Vila Velha. And Churchill’s is relaunching its lockdown-era ‘Port.Club’, with guided tastings and eye-catching packaging. ‘We want to simplify things and let everyone in on the secret that Port is fun,’ says Zoe Graham, Churchill’s co-CEO.

Part of Port’s problem is that we cling to the idea of it as a post prandial. As far back as 1983 Country Life bemoaned as ‘grossly unfair’ the ‘outdated’ picture of ‘the careful decanting over a candle, the ladies leaving the table’. It doesn’t need to be this way, and indeed it hasn’t always been: the poet Tennyson was famous for drinking it all the way through dinner. But pairing Port with food isn’t entirely straightforward.

‘We interrupt the fermentation process to fortify with neutral grape brandy while there's still sugar in the wine, which is why Port is sweet,’ Henry Bennett of Port specialist and distributor Fells explains during a tasting with Snowdonia Cheeses. Being relatively high in both sugar and alcohol, it has a tendency to overwhelm food — within the spectrum of styles, however, there’s plenty of room for manoeuvre.

Fruit ruby Port, which is probably what you’re picturing, remains blue cheese’s best friend and can also do double duty as a dessert wine (chocolate puds, you’re up). But it’s amber-hue tawny Ports, slowly cask-aged to aid oxidation, which are the real revelation.

‘Tawny Ports used to sometimes be a bit cloying but we’ve been doing a lot of work on ours over the past 20 or so years,’ Bennett explains as he hands me a glass of Graham’s 10 Year Old Tawny. ‘Some of that is ensuring we’re picking at exactly the right time and how we tread the grapes, but we also re-rack every year [moving the wines into new barrels] to remove sediment.’

He points out the freshness on the finish which creates a lovely salinity when paired with the cheese. Tawnies are extremely versatile and can pair with anything nutty (think sherry with marcona almonds) or sweet as well as patés, not unlike an off-dry, aromatic German white wine.

At Sova in Notting Hill, the wine list is built around low-intervention bottles from Georgia, Armenia, Ukraine and Slovenia, yet bar manager Dmitrii Komarov has found space for Ferreira’s funky, savoury-sweet 10 Year Old Tawny, which he serves slightly chilled. ‘Guests sometimes tell us they don’t like Port, then try a glass and surprise themselves,’ he says. ‘Those nutty, dried-fruit flavours work really well with something savoury.’

Unless they’ve been bottle aged (look out for ‘crusted’ or ‘vintage’ on the label), Ports don’t require decanting, so in one sense they’re easy to drink — but at around 20% ABV they're a punchy party-starter. For a gentler on-ramp, look to France and Spain, where white Port (made from white grapes) is topped up with tonic water. It’s served long like this at Sager + Wilde, the Hackney bar at the forefront of the natural-wine boom, alongside gildas — a combination well worth bookmarking for spring and summer.