This is not your grandma’s port, well it is but it sure doesn’t seem like it! Gone are the short glasses of tepid port served in stuffy restaurants and on airplanes in first class. Instead serving port chilled in white wine glasses as you would with any other sweet wines is so much more refreshing. I never thought about port in that way until I tried the white port-tonic cocktail garnished with slices of lemon at the tasting session.
The presentation by Jorge Nunes, Dow’s Asia Representative was equally eye opening. The rational for serving port chilled is a simple one as Jorge suggests, it just gets too hot here in Hong Kong with room temperatures of 30 degrees C. The talk also gave me a better appreciation for port as a whisky drinker. The stopper you find on whisky bottles can be found on some port bottles as well. These bottles when opened can keep up to 2 months which is far shorter than whisky but an eternity for wine. The age statements are also similar to whisky although the differences between a 10 year old and 20 year old port is a little harder to distinguish when the wines have been chilled.
Another surprising thing was how appetising the ports were. After a few glasses I was wolfing down the pate and cheese. However, the best pairing was chocolate and Dow’s Nirvana Port which was specially concocted for chocolate lovers. I think I ate a plates worth of chocolate that night!
Whisky Diaries 