Gallagher's Travels: Wine and Other Libations

TONGS FOR THE MEMORIES

Savoir faire - you can't even pronounce it. You regard the wine list as a third rail and pull corks with the dexterity of a walrus. But here's your chance to corner a bit of wine suave where even snobs are shaky. With a little study, even you could become The Pasha of Port.

Yes, Port. The name reeks of velvet smoking jackets (you'd look good in a smoking jacket), blazing stone hearths and rows of faded ancestors. It puts color in the cheeks and courage in the heart. And what a comfort on these long winter nights when global warming seems to have forsaken us.

The potion from Portugal is an English invention. Back in the 18th century, Brits relied on a steady stream of French wine to help them forget they lived in damp castles and drove on the wrong side of the road. The crafty French pounced on this weakness during one of their regularly scheduled wars, and turned off the faucet, thus winning the battle at the expense of a lot of wine sales, an economic policy they continue to favor today. Desperate Brits searching for their fix discovered that Portugal had lovely vineyards. Unfortunately, they made wretched wine, but the Anglos were too sick of beer to care.

To keep the wines from spoiling, as it were, on the voyage up the coast, they added a dollop of Brandy as preservative. To their delighted surprise, the extra alcohol halted fermentation partway through, leaving a deliciously sweet wine that became a British staple for the next 200 years.

As the History bell rings, let's take our notebooks down the hall to Chemistry for a brief overview of categories of Port you can memorize for intimidating your friends. Vintage Port is made of grapes from a single harvest, and only in exceptional years. It's bottled early and then requires decades of aging to reach its prime.

An alternative for the broke or impatient is Late Bottled Vintage. Kept in wood a bit longer, it delivers an approximation of the vintage experience without all that cash and waiting. Ruby Port, moved quickly from barrel to bottle, is meant to be young, dark red, and intensely fruity. Tawny Port spends anywhere from six to over 100 years in oak and emerges brown and toasty, oozing toffee, caramel and vanilla. The older it gets, the more delicate, pale and expensive.

But amortize the costs: all that alcohol and sugar makes Port one of the few wines you can uncork and keep drinking for weeks, as aperitif, dessert wine or shot to steady the nerves before a harrowing task like trying to get live tech support on the phone.

Port is shot through with the rituals and initiations of a particularly British obsession: keeping others out of one's club, an exclusive refuge where one asserts one's supremacy by substituting "one" for "you" or "me," thereby avoiding the faux pas of actually committing to a concrete statement. The initiated know that Port is always passed from right to left. Should your host ask if you're acquainted with the Bishop of Norwich, it's code for: "The bottle ran aground in front of you ten minutes ago, man! For God's sake pass it on."

Then there's the slickest ritual of all. After fifty years a cork gets crumbly. Rather than shred it with a corkscrew, you (or one) brandish(es) Port Tongs, a pair of long iron calipers with wooden handles. Stick the metal ends in the fire until red-hot. Clamp them around the neck of the bottle, just below the bottom of the cork. After a minute or two, which you should fill with Houdini-like gestures of danger and mystery, remove the tongs, hand them to an assistant, and quickly wrap the bottle neck in a cold, wet, napkin. The sudden change of temperature will cause the glass to break neatly and the neck and cork to come off in your hand.

That's what's supposed to happen, anyway. Other possibilities involve third degree burns and glass shards flying around the room. It might be a good idea to wear safety goggles. And practice this a few times before trying to impress, say, an OSHA inspector.

With many long nights of Port-fueled practice, your prowess will grow. You might even invent an arcane ritual of your own. Guaranteed to impress one's friends. Frightfully.

Top Port houses to look for:

Cockburn
Fonseca
Dow
Graham
Niepoort
Quinta do Noval
Sandeman
Smith Woodhouse
Taylor Fladgate
Warre

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