I. Distractions In 1987, when I was 18 and a dollar was worth more than twice as much as it is today, I started reading magazines: M, Esquire, GQ. Nearby, in our somewhat cultured Texas town, a new bookstore opened in a cavernous space that had formerly housed the shag-carpeted roller skating rink of our childhood. Through the front windows, which had before been darkly tinted to give the place an alluring den-of-prepubescent-iniquity vibe, now streamed bright, clean light, showcasing a look and layout that would become the interior design gestalt of today’s national-chain, big-box book superstore. The rows upon rows of open, dustless shelving bearing a veritable warehouse of volumes; the ceiling hung with its industrial innards on display; the enfilade of check-out cubicles; and the wall – the great wall – that displayed a preposterous-to-behold assortment of glossies, quarterlies, journals, newsweeklies, fanzines, tabloids, almanacs, and all other flora and fauna of magazines arrayed upon a rack perhaps 50 feet long.  I went in there to look for a book. I liked books, and, one day, I was sure I wanted to write one. But I got distracted and bought a magazine instead – that August’s issue of GQ, which still stands out in my mind as a thing of formative significance. At that time, the zeitgeist was defined by a Walkman-wearing version of the American Renaissance Man – the highly-ambitious, status-obsessed, money-motivated, health-nut known as a Yuppie. No magazine positioned itself more authoritatively in defining this new sociological creature’s lifestyle than GQ, and it did it with whiter teeth, snappier suspenders, better accessories, bigger polka dots and more caffeine in the ink of its display copy.  I remember that issue less for the photos by Richard Avedon or Steven Meisel, the words of Martin Amis or Frederick Exley, than for this: Erzeugerabfüllung. It was one of the longest, strangest strings of letters from the Roman alphabet I had ever seen. Neither did it seem designed to come out of someone’s mouth. But there it was in Alan Richman’s Wine & Spirits column, accompanied by a lovely still-life photograph of his topic: two bottles of Riesling Kabinetts on a white, sun-dappled tablecloth. Richman’s main point – made almost 35 years ago – still holds true: estate-bottled, table-quality German wines remain some of the least expensive, most delicious wines in the world, chiefly because – then as now – the labels, as he wrote, “cannot be understood by anyone who is not a part-time oenophile, linguist and cartographer”. One US dollar in Richman’s pocket, as I have already said, bought what roughly two-dollars-and-fifty-cents does today; what he was on the hunt for was a good dry white in a range that would now cost somewhere between 12 and 30 bucks, and he easily accomplished that by finding a dealer in New York City who carried a good selection of wines from the Mosel and Rheingau. At the time, I didn’t know the meaning or significance of any of this, but it staked a claim in my brain. The only wine I had ever tasted was the one served at our Episcopal church during Eucharist on Sundays. The flavour it had was of a strange, super-concentrated jam that somehow warmed your upper body. Even as a young kid, I liked it. But the adjectives these German bottles were squeezing out of Richman – “citrus-like”, “honeyed”, “tart-sweet” – weren’t close to describing what was in that chalice, even if you believed in transubstantiation. Was it because Richman’s wine was white, and the parish’s was red? Perhaps, but both colours of grape juice bottled by Welch’s tasted pretty much the same to me. No, I sensed there was something – a lot – I had to learn, and, along with the romance and beauty of the labels, and the contextual air of well-bred taste and cultural with-it-ness featured on the other pages, this, I feel sure, was the decisive moment, the true origin point, when I came to believe that among the many extraordinary things that make life worth living, not just words but wine reigns at the top.  I warned you about distractions, didn’t I? Because that would be my excuse for now informing you, as a quite apropos footnote, that, yes, there was something unusual about our church’s Communion wine. It was, as I have confirmed with the church, actually port (Taylor’s Tawny, to be more accurate), cut, according to tradition, with water. There is a good and fascinating reason for this. In 1701, when the War of the Spanish Succession kicked off, France also became an enemy of England, and its wines, as a result, were no longer made available for import. The Anglican Church searched for and found a replacement, the fortified wines of its new ally, Portugal, and port continues to be an acceptable option to pair with the Host.  II. Distillations A satisfying story, not unlike a satisfying life, is one that surprises you with the mystery of its unfolding. A thing pulls in a certain direction long enough to reach the proximity of something else which then turns toward a new destination. I had actually gone into that bookstore, as I said, to look at books. But I came out, even though I didn’t yet know it, with a different compass point. Within a few years, shortly after graduating from college, in 1992, I got hired by The New Yorker, where I stayed for almost nine years. I then met my future wife, who wisely laughed at the thought we might be able to survive in New York City on my meagre salary, so I went to Vogue, and soon after became the founding editor of Men’s Vogue. After 23 issues, and four years, the financial crisis laid an axe to many magazines, including that one. Eventually, I took on the editorship of Town & Country. Then, finally, in 2016, I moved up to Esquire, the magazine, as it happens, that didn’t offer me a job when The New Yorker did, and became that storied magazine’s editor in chief, until – well, you best read about that in The New York Times.  As far as distractions go, magazines were a good one. They made me who I am, gave me a tremendously worldly education, honed my taste, introduced me to all manner of accomplished people, required me to build quite a wardrobe, and paid me pretty well to do all of this, often with a glass of wine not far out of the picture. There was really no other way I would have ever got to taste all the bottles I have (a lot of the big names people whisper about from Burgundy and Bordeaux, Champagne and also Piedmont, Tuscany and Napa). I built a modest cave à vin of my own by buying the Smith Haut Lafittes of the world way before hedge-fund hoi polloi ran up the prices, and by having access to rare offerings, like 12 bottles of Fiorano, the legendary white wine Alberico Boncompagni Ludovisi, prince of Venosa, made before ripping out all his vines. I smelled the musty perfume of Margaux in the cellar as I watched the workers rack the wine by candlelight. I lured Jay McInerney away from the Wall Street Journal to become my wine columnist; and I once stood in Bordeaux’s town square, tight on 2002 Pétrus, trying with great focus to commune with the statue of Michel de Montaigne while my French friend, a true oenophile, extolled the majesty of the Big Mac’s special sauce.  As the editor of a magazine, curiosity is your profession, even to the point of distraction. Editors – writers, too – are prone to it. It’s a hazard of the gift, and having a jumble of ideas, if you’re any good, is key to making a magazine of any real intellectual or creative daring. Now as a husband and father of three, working from home and trying to be ‘present’, and a still youngish former editor and occasional micro-influencer trying to stave off the solitude to fathom and plot the next phase of a fruitful future, this skill of mine, the strength of which became even more magnified over two decades, is something of a family project.  The way I most often hear the word ‘distraction’ now, for instance, is when it’s being hurled at me in verb form by my wife or daughters accusing me of being more of a phone-enslaved screen vegetable than they are. (I respectfully disagree.) But it’s a sore point for two reasons. One, what I did as an editor is, in a nutshell, now what a smartphone essentially does. Not very imaginatively, of course, and not with taste or charm or originality, but with a bloody, money-grubbing ruthlessness that stalks every step of our digital peregrinations and doesn’t give a twist if the algorithms that are its brain make us its slave by retrofitting our attention spans for kindergarten.  The smartphone – not the former me or any of my fellow kind still in the media biz – is now the true croupier of culture, dealing out a targeted shuffle of Pavlovian temptations to the point of daily mental exhaustion. And, though this thing is in many ways my personal nemesis, I am, against every fibre of my being, too often its obedient servant. Aiming not to live according to the famous line by T.S. Eliot – “distracted from distraction by distraction” – I recently decided to at least take a serious inventory of my favourite ones, both those of the pre-digital sort (tennis, The Walking Dead, checking the mailbox, my sock collection) and those of the post-digital sort (the any and everything I do because my phone wants me to). Then I caught myself watching tennis on my phone and realised this might be harder than I thought. It’s enough to drive a person to drink, thank god! With that in mind, I like to keep a special something for the occasion around, in this case – what else? – two bottles of Riesling Kabinett, for it had struck me as more than a little weird that I’ve probably tasted fewer than a handful of German wines in my entire life. Part of the reason is that those I had were bad, and, like a lot of other simpletons about this great wine region of the world, I’d come to think of Riesling as a cloying elixir equal parts green Jolly Rancher, apple cider vinegar, and hairspray. This, I knew, was wrong, not true and, in terms of wine equity and inclusion, on the wrong side of history. But, if you happen to live in a place like I do – a bourgie swathe of Connecticut bordering New York City where the shops cater heavily to Cali-Fran-Taly banker’s tastes – it might take you a few stops to find what Richman recommended, an erzeugerabfüllung (estate-bottled) Kabinett (wine made from grapes with a minimum must weight/sugar content) Riesling, and when you do it will probably be coated in a fine sift of years-old dust. I bought a green (Mosel) bottle for US$16 and a brown (Rhine) bottle for US$20, both handsomely labelled. I opened them a few minutes ago and took several investigative swigs. The words bright, invigorating and snappy came to mind. One is indeed sweeter, and, though not my usual jam, it is tamped by a pleasing peachy tartness, and the classic overtone of honey isn’t making my palate feel doused with syrup. The other example is, as Richman said so long ago, a very finely layered creature with mineral clarity and an echo of baked bread, something a gluten-free person like me finds particularly appealing. A rather obvious thought: why haven’t I been buying this instead of throwing a ton of endless money at affordably bad white Burgundy, which is mostly a product aimed at fulfilling a desired outcome, like White Claw hard seltzer? III. Words But don’t let me get distracted, again. A writer really has to be careful about such things. Just think about it. Unlike, say, a painter or musician or actor or photographer, the process of writing requires zero physical exertion, no chance to score an endorphin release while sitting staring anxiously at a blank page. Of the many things in life that vie against the counter intuitive impulse to be glued to a desk, Cyril Connolly, in Enemies of Promise, his classic study of the things that distracted him (and others) from becoming a great writer, names the temptations but does not say much about why they’re so deeply tempting to someone who would otherwise be sitting alone in an empty room. Praise, money, fame, social prominence, affairs and journalism are the most common boltholes, according to Connolly, who, as a famously late sleeper that married three times, might have also added the bliss of unconsciousness and excessive alimony. In 1938, the year the book was published, he would never have imagined how hard the task might get without a cigarette. Smoking is a death wish, I know, but when you want to off yourself for still having a hundred pages to go, being able to snap open a nice lighter, flick some ash, stub a butt and inhale some lungfuls of focus-enhancing nicotine must have been kind of helpful. Connolly also doesn’t have much to say about drink except that artists who drink to excess do so “out of the consciousness of wasted ability”. According to that, the 20th century’s most famous literary alcoholics – Dorothy Parker, Truman Capote, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Styron, Elizabeth Bishop, James Joyce, Raymond Chandler, William Faulkner – might have left behind even greater treasures than they did. Because Ernest Hemingway did almost everything with more gusto than any of his peers, including running up his bar tab, as a drinker he belongs in his own sentence. He is the novelist who most romanced a good drink or nice bottle of wine as one of life’s great pleasures. Who didn’t want to have a vermouth with Jake when reading The Sun Also Rises? (Don’t, it’s gross, at least if you order it at one of those kiosks in Montmartre where the bottles are hung upside down with spring-loaded dispensers.) Or, track down a bottle of Valdepeñas, Hemingway’s favourite variety of Spanish wine. Or, get a drink at the bar named after him at the Ritz, in Paris, and then go somewhere on the Left Bank to order “a dozen portugaises and a half-carafe of the dry white wine”.  In the early work, he is not boastful about drinking so much as he is the possessor of an unusual appetite for a good buzz. He is also, like Connolly, aware of the need to keep writing separate from drinking, and drinking within his control. It is hard to read the first paragraph of A Moveable Feast, in which he describes an “evilly run café where the drunkards of the quarter crowded together and I kept away from it because of the smell of dirty bodies and the sour smell of drunkenness”, except as a kind of terrifying admonition to himself. It is tragic that he didn’t heed his own advice. Late in his life, Hemingway became fond of rum daiquiris at the Floridita, his favourite bar in Havana, which might explain his taste for a prose style that soon became too often cloying self-parody. In one of the most extraordinary drinking sessions ever committed to words, in the roman à clef Across the River and Into the Trees, a 50-year-old Hemingway, who was smitten with a teenage Italian countess from Venice, fictionalises his infatuation with a last muse. In one stretch (that covers an evening-to-dawn crawl from Harry’s Bar, the grill at the Gritti Palace, a gondola and a hotel room), one half or another of the couple imbibes: one scotch whisky and soda; six Montgomery Martinis (15 parts gin; 1 part vermouth), two of which are described in size as ‘super’; a bottle of Capri Bianco; two bottles of Valpolicella; two bottles of Roederer Brut ’42; and two bottles of Perrier-Jouët. That is, I suppose, one extreme, and, clearly, not one to be tried at home.  The other might have been espoused by Dr. Samuel Johnson, the great critic and lexicographer. As a young man, he’d drained “many a bottle of wine” but loved port especially. (Perhaps Johnson, a devout Anglican who was born in 1709, in the midst of England’s 14-year war with Spain, also first encountered port as a boy at the Communion altar.) He describes himself to friend and biographer James Boswell as having been “apt to go to excess in it”, adding that, “therefore, after having been for some time without it, on account of illness, I thought it better not to return to it”.  Boswell, who worried about his own dependence on alcohol, even keeping a journal of his intake in an attempt to enforce moderation, argued for a third way, which some of the Romantics later adopted. Wine, he claimed, “produces truth; in vino veritas”. Hoping to persuade Johnson of his point, Boswell once convinced the critic to come down off the wagon for just one glass of claret, so Johnson “might judge, not from recollection, which might be dim, but from immediate sensation”. Boswell reports what happened after the glass was emptied: “Johnson shook his head, and said, ‘Poor stuff! No, Sir, claret is the liquor for boys; port, for men,’” adding, “‘A man would be drowned by it before it made him drunk.’”  That actually reminds me of something I think I forgot to mention about Riesling Kabinetts – they’re also highly admired for their low percentage of alcohol. On that note, I think I’ll have another glass.  This article was originally published in FONDATA, Issue Two.

Jay Fielden, former editor of Men’s Vogue, Town & Country and Esquire, recalls how a magazine column on wine, read in a Texas bookstore, shifted his ambitions beyond journalism and set him on the path to becoming a writer of books.

Former Esquire editor-in-chief Jay Fielden reflects on magazines, writing, Riesling Kabinett and the distractions that shaped a life in words and wine.

Jay Fielden on Wine, Words and Distraction

How one became another  

What is Port? Port is a fortified wine made in the Douro Valley in Portugal. Traditionally the wines were shipped along the river to Oporto (also known as Porto), from which the wine takes its name. A huge number of grapes are permitted for Port production, however, there are five main varieties used: Touriga Nacional (widely thought to be the best grape for Port, giving its name to Quinta do Noval’s top wine, Nacional), Tinta Barroca, Touriga Franca (or Touriga Francesa), Tinta Roriz (aka Tempranillo) and Tinto Cão. The vineyards sit on steep, terraced slopes alongside the Douro river. Thanks to these vertiginous slopes, much of the vineyard work has to be done by hand, with little mechanization possible. The further inland you go – moving east from Oporto – the hotter and drier the climate becomes. The vineyard area is divided into three key regions: Baixo Corgo: The coolest and wettest region which produces the lightest wines. Cima Corgo: With lower rainfall and higher temperatures, this is the traditional area for the best Port wines. Douro Superior: Particularly dry and hot, this lesser-planted region nevertheless can produce very high-quality wines. For red wines, the grapes are trodden – traditionally by foot, but also now by machine – and fermentation is cut short by the addition of neutral alcohol (called aguardente), thereby leaving residual sugar in the wine. Styles of Port 
There are two main types of Port – those aged in bottle and those aged in cask. Those
aged in cask are designed to be consumed upon release, while those aged in bottle need time to mature.  Ruby: The most basic, entry-level Port is Ruby. The wine tends to be aged in cask or tank for two to three years. Bottled while youthful, it’s bold and full of primary fruit, with a fiery kick from the spirit. No need to decant. Reserve: A step up from ruby, this wine is normally aged a little longer (again in bulk rather than bottle), perhaps being made with higher-quality fruit, so that it has more complexity than a ruby Port. No decanting necessary. LBV: Late Bottled Vintage Port comes from a single year, but spends more time maturing in cask (rather than bottle). Bottled between four and six years after its harvest, the wines are designed to be consumed long before vintage Port, but offer some of the complexity of the
style. Some wines are filtered and others aren’t, so it may or may not need decanting. Crusted: This style takes its name from the crust, or sediment, it throws while in bottle. A blend of several years, the wine is – like LBVs – aged a little longer in cask before bottling,
and likewise is designed to offer some of the complexity of vintage Port. Decanting is essential Vintage: The finest Ports come from a single vintage. This style accounts for a mere 1% of production, with the wines only made in certain years from the very best fruit. Traditionally vintages are either “declared” by producers (and therefore it is a year where they make a vintage Port) or not (with the official declaration classically announced on St George’s Day, a year and a half or so after the harvest). There are, however, a few years with “split declarations” where some producers chose one year, and others chose another for their vintage wines. While once there were only three or so declarations each decade, climate change has seen an increasing number of years producing fruit worthy of vintage wines, and therefore an increasing number of declarations. The wines tend to spend two or three years in wood, but are aged mostly in bottle. These
wines are built to last – having lots of tannin, flavour and alcohol. Spending decades in bottle, they develop extraordinary complexity. Because of the high tannin level, these wines throw a lot of sediment and it is essential to decant them. Single Quinta: These are vintage wines from single “quinta” or estate (while Vintage Ports are often a blend of estates), often produced in years that are not officially declared.  Tawny: Tawny Ports are aged oxidatively in cask, and thereby gradually losing colour to develop a “tawny” colour, while also developing nutty, dried fruit and caramel aromas. The longer it is aged, the more complexity it has. (The most basic examples are a blend of ruby and white Port to create the appearance of a Tawny, but none of the same flavour complexity.) Tawny Reserves have seen minimum seven years in cask, while many come with an age statement – 10, 20, 30 or Over 40 years old – indicating the average age of the blend.  Colheita is a Tawny from a single vintage, spending minimum seven years in cask prior to release (although it is often longer). They are designed to be consumed soon after bottling (a long time in bottle can in fact negatively impact the wine’s quality) and no decanting is
necessary, although you may want to chill the wine lightly. Given their oxidative nature, Tawnies can often last longer once open than their red counterparts.  White: White Port is mainly made with the Gouveio, Malvasia Fina and Viosinho grapes. Youthful examples can make for an excellent aperitif, sometimes served with tonic and lemon as a cocktail, but you can also find rare aged white Ports, carrying an age statement that – as with Tawny Port – is the average age of the blend. Best Port vintages of the last 50 years: 1970, 1977, 1983, 1985, 1992, 1994, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 Browse Port or read more Editorial 

Rich, complex and deeply rewarding, at its best Port is one of the most age-worthy styles of wine produced today. Here’s a quick guide to the fortified wine – from the various styles made to the best vintages to buy

Port is one of the most age-worthy styles of wine. Here’s a quick guide to the fortified wine from the various styles made to the best vintages to buy

Everything you need to know about Port wine

Everything you need to know about Port

Looking across the dramatic slopes of the Douro Valley, it’s easy to imagine that time has stood still here. While Port is steeped in tradition, however, recent decades have seen it leap into the modern era – with no shortage of diverging opinions about the “right” way to produce Port. Just put a handful of the region’s finest in a room and ask about co-planted or monovarietal vineyards, granite or stainless steel, de-stemmed or whole-bunch fruit, trodden by foot or machine, and feel the temperature rise as the debate unfurls.  There is, however, one element that gets surprisingly little press – the all-important fortification, an element that arguably defines Port, and until relatively recently was out of winemakers’ control. Originally spirit was added to harden the wines for long journeys in ships’ bows, preparing them for long voyages, and only became standard in the 19th century.   Once the fruit has been picked, trodden and starts fermenting, producers add spirit – or aguardente, often colloquially (and erroneously) referred to as “brandy” – to halt fermentation, thereby retaining the natural grape sugars that give Port its signature sweetness. The wine is a mere 5-6% alcohol at this stage, and the fortification brings it up to between 19 and 22%. Given the strength that the wine needs to reach, this spirit represents a massive 20% of the final product. Legally, aguardente must be a grape spirit of 77% – significantly lower in strength than the spirits used for other fortified wines (such as Madeira or Vins Doux Naturels, which use a highly rectified grape spirit of 95-96%). This lower alcoholic strength is key; meaning the spirit is less neutral, and therefore has even more of an impact on the final wine.  This spirit has a rocky history which isn’t free from scandal. After a local shortage, 1904 became known as the “Schnapps vintage” – having been fortified largely with a German spirit made from potato and grain. The 1972, ’73 and ’74 vintages saw industrial alcohol used instead of grape distillate. (Responsibility for this latter fraud fell to a French supplier who duped the unknowing Casa do Douro into buying Yugoslavian spirit.) Besides these occasional lapses, the spirit was mainly made from excess wine in the Douro during 19th and early 20th century, but in 1907 the Portuguese Prime Minister João Franco banned the distillation of wine from the Douro, meaning aguardente had to be found elsewhere. Despite presenting 20% of the wine, the spirit used today is far from local, sourced from far beyond Portuguese borders (often Spain and France).  The key date – however – is 1991. Under the authoritarian Estado Novo regime in the early 1930s, a monopoly on the spirit was established, with its supply state-controlled. This continued for over half a century, via the Casa do Douro, and then from 1976 via the Instituto do Vinho do Porto e Douro or IVDP. The freedom to choose which spirit used was only granted to shippers in 1991 – something that David Guimaraens (Head Winemaker at Taylor Fladgate) argues is one of the most significant changes in Port.  “We had no choice, the spirit quality was very average,” Guimaraens laments of the old days. He returned to Portugal, fresh from studying at Australia’s leading winemaking school Roseworthy, in 1990 – just before the shippers gained the freedom to choose their own spirit. “When you use a very clean, fine spirit, when it is young, your fruitiness comes out much more – making it more appealing in youth, almost entirely because of the quality of the spirit,” he explains. He cites two examples – Taylor’s Vargellas Vinha Velha and Croft’s Sērikos – both wines which are made from 100-year-old vineyards, made as they always have been in granite lagares. It is, he argues, only the spirit that has changed in these Ports.   For Guimaraens, the quality of spirit is most apparent in a vintage Port’s “teenage” phase – between 14 and 19 years of age, when it is starting to lose its fruit but not yet fully developed bottle maturity. This transitional phase is, in his view “much more attractive than it used to be in the past”, meaning Port drinkers are safer opening a bottle at any stage of its life. He points to 2000 as a pivotal vintage, when the quality of spirit started to really improve and produce, in his view, some of the region’s finest wines.  “Spirit has been crucial,” Richard Mayson – writer and author specializing in the wines of Portugal – agrees. “When vinification techniques were experimental – the late 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s – you can certainly taste the poor quality spirit in the thinner-quality wines.” He explains that this period saw massive emigration and a resulting shortage of feet to tread the region’s harvests. The early autovinifiers used in lieu of the traditional foot-treading simply didn’t result in the same level of extraction – and therefore have, over time, revealed the underlying spirit quality. There are, of course, exceptions – with some great wines made. He, however, like Guimaraens, feels the 2000 vintage marked a real shift in the class of spirit used.  The uptick in the quality of spirit is one of the reasons – along with the quality of the fruit, viticulture and more – that Carlos Agrellos of Quinta do Noval feels the property has been able to declare every vintage since 2011. “It’s extremely important to choose the right one,” Carlos Agrellos of Quinta do Noval explains of the spirit. He is one of a group of 20 companies – including Niepoort – who have, over the past five years, clubbed together to buy spirit. As smaller operatives, grouping together gives them more clout, enabling them to secure higher-quality spirit for their wines – and fair prices. Each May they meet in Gaia, tasting through a selection of spirits sent over by three or four different producers – all of which are scored blind. In 2020, they tasted 20 different spirits that were approved.   The results of the tasting are shared with everyone, then each company will decide which they wish to buy for their wines. The spirits come from southern France, Spain or Portugal. There are two categories of spirit –those distilled from wine and those from wine lees. The two are very different: the former is favoured by most – having more delicate, fruit and floral aromatics; while the latter was only approved for use in 2014, and is usually stronger in flavour. While in general “wine” spirits are generally the best, the spirits from lees can offer additional complexity. “At Noval,” Agrellos explains, “we tend to blend these two and use them for different types of wine, from white Port to Tawny to Vintage Ports.” There’s no fixed blend, and it varies from year to year, but he tends to use both – with higher-grade spirits for Vintage Ports.   Symington and Fladgate – the giants of the Port trade – purchase such large volumes that they buy their spirit independently. Tom Symington – fifth-generation family member and part of the winemaking team – explains that the spirit used to be a wider cut, and today it’s narrower, resulting in a purer spirit. “We focus on the neutrality, the aromas and the way it reacts with the wine,” he says.   Talking to producers about the style of spirit they look for, there is a general consensus that neutrality is desirable – to what extent, however, varies significantly. Agrellos aims for a more neutral, but slightly floral spirit. The most important thing for him, however, is the volume on the palate: he believes that it is this volume and texture of spirit that is most important for vintage Port. “It’s what will hold the wines for years to come,” he says. He values this above and beyond aromatics, while of course looking for something very pure. It’s this texture that leads him to use some wine-lees distillate – which has much more to offer in that regard, as well as its stronger flavour. The wine distillate by contrast tends to be purer in terms of aromatics, and is sometimes even double-distilled.  While Symington uses the same spirit across all their Ports, David Guimaraens looks to use a different style of spirit depending on the style of Port in question. He is clear, however, that it shouldn’t be part of the house style – but a “neutral oenological product”. He chooses to use one batch of spirit across each style for all the houses, not wanting it to be a differentiating factor, or dominate the quality of the fruit. For example, the spirit used for his vintage wines costs twice as much as that for the most entry-level wines – “And you get your return,” he notes.  He blends his own “master spirit”, combining batches sourced mostly from Portugal and France. “In the early days, it wasn’t as simple as using a clean spirit. To get spirit we wanted, we had to get the wines fermented in a particular way,” Guimaraens explains. With an overly neutral spirit, you risk ending up with a lighter Port; but too high a component of higher alcohol and it interferes with the wine’s organoleptic character, subduing the fruit. Too many spirits are made with excess bulk wine – rather than wine that has been fermented with the express purpose of producing spirit.  Dirk Niepoort favours quality and a little bit of character. “The purest, the best, the most harmonious – but not necessarily the most neutral one” is what he looks for, he explains. At the group tastings, his tastes are reportedly well known, with many of his colleagues able to identify the aguardente he will choose. His preferred spirits are finer, lighter, with more precision, but – importantly – also character. He finds that they tend to come from France, often from Cognac, from vineyards specifically planted with the idea of producing a distillate – not just excess wine. “Our grapes are too good for distillation,” Niepoort explains – the best spirits, in his view, are made with grapes from cool climates, with high yields and high acidity. He normally chooses three different spirits, depending on availability and price, with the very best spirit reserved for his top wines. For any organic wines, of course, they require an organic distillate.   While Niepoort admits the quality of spirit has improved, he doesn’t believe that the quality was nearly as bad as some – such as Guimaraens – imply, telling me people are unnecessarily “ferocious” about it. “I think the Port Wine Institute did a fantastic job in selecting huge amounts of spirit. Considering the huge quantity needed, the average quality was extremely high.” It certainly isn’t stopping him drinking fine vintage Ports – such as a bottle of 1963 Noval he had the pleasure of uncorking recently. Nevertheless, he doesn’t deny that it was a significant step not having to buy a mass product, and it has really opened the market.  It’s not as simple as winemakers having total autonomy, however, with a strict approval system via the IVDP to ensure the quality of spirit being used meets their standards. “It’s not only complicated – it’s expensive,” Niepoort says of the process. He’s found it a struggle to get some spirits approved, with, for example, double-distilled spirits harder to get sign-off than column-distilled liquids – a clear source of frustration. While the process is clearly there to control quality, producers aren’t abusing this independence; in general they are spending more money than ever before – making the whole thing, in Niepoort’s view, futile. “We should have some freedom to do what we want,” he says.  Tom Symington feels that it’s more than just the quality of spirit that has improved the quality of Port. He believes other developments have been more significant, particularly emphasising advancements in winemaking (highlighting the introduction of stainless steel as well as robotic lagares) and viticulture, especially monovarietal vineyards which – he considers – allow them to achieve perfect phenolic ripeness, with no green or raisined fruit. It is more than just the equipment, he notes – it’s the know-how gained over time, and most importantly balancing that with tradition.  “Of course the modern young people will tell you that viticulture is much better today,” says Niepoort dismissively. He prefers to work with old-fashioned growers. Over 90% of his vineyards are over 60 years in age and traditional field blends. He feels that the shift to monovarietal vineyards – dedicated only to five of the region’s many indigenous varieties – is, along with a move toward de-stemmed fruit rather than foot-trodden whole bunches, responsible for changing the style of Port. “The wines became fruitier and darker, but at the same time, thinner,” he explains. Niepoort historically didn’t make any Port themselves, and the 1994 vintage was the first they produced in-house. For him, this shift – from the 1970s and ‘80s – for shippers to own vineyards, rather than merely buying wine in, is the greatest advancement in the region.  The Douro Valley has seen a run of top-rated vintages – with universal declarations in 2011, 2016 and 2017, and some shippers declaring 2018 and now 2019 (including Niepoort). The general rule of three declarations per decade looks set to become a thing of the past. How much can this be attributed to aguardente? Relatively little, perhaps, however it’s hard to argue that this liquid – making up a fifth of the final wine – doesn’t have a role – and depending on who you talk to, the heart – to producing the very best Port.   Read more Editorial or browse our range of Port

Port is much more than just wine. “Brandy” or aguardente makes up 20% of every bottle – and some argue that a shift in the quality of this spirit is key to the wines’ superiority in the last 20 years. Sophie Thorpe finds out more about the firewater that defines the Douro’s age-old fortified wines 

Exploring the firewater – “Brandy” or aguardente that makes up 20% of every bottle – which defines the Douro’s age-old fortified Port wines.

Aguardente vinica and its role in Port winemaking

A spirited debate: the tale of Port’s 20%

Tawny

Port

Douro

Portugal

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