Weekend Walk: Leith Hill Woodland Walk (2.5 miles)

1. From either of the Windy Gap car parks, head south using the track adjacent to the cottage, following the orange waymarkers.

2. This track leads you down through the woodland where, in the autumn, you can hear roving flocks of woodland birds including nuthatches, coal tits and treecreepers. The Woodland Trail offers a lovely walk at all times of year with autumn being particularly stunning due to the the turning colours of the trees.

3. At the junction of tracks take the second left through the Lime Avenue, planted as part of the original estate landscape. The path takes you past the walled garden on the right and to the road where you should turn left carefully heading down the road for 55yd (50m) before heading right into the farmland over the stile.

4. Follow straight ahead in front of Leith Hill Place on your right and admire the stunning views across the parkland and southwards over the Weald onto the ridge of the South Downs. Pass through the kissing gate and cross the second field to the gate just below the pond. Once through the gate you will pass through woodland. Bear right and follow the straight track ahead of you.

5. Follow this track which bends right and heads uphill. Bear right, following the signs which lead you through the rhododendron wood and up through the car park to the road.

6. Turn right from the car park and then left up a couple of steps, being careful when crossing the road. Once across the road follow the path heading left up alongside the sandstone wall. This path will lead you all the way up through woodland to the tower.

This fortified folly marks the highest point in south-east England and was built in 1765 by Richard Hull of Leith Hill Place. Crowning the summit of the hill and standing 965ft (317m) above sea level, it has impressive 360 degree views from the top, north to London and south to the English Channel. Amazingly, on a clear day up to 13 counties can be seen.

7. Reward yourself with some light refreshments from the servery whilst enjoying the stunning views of inner London looking north and the English Channel to the south, through Shoreham Gap some 25 miles (40km) away. To learn more about the area, and enjoy the spectacular panoramic view from the top battlements, why not enter the tower. To return to the car park head down from the tower, turning left with your back to the noticeboard following the rail around to the top of the steps. Carefully take the steps back to the car park.

DISTANCE: 2.5 miles
OS MAPS: MapLandranger 187; Explorer 146
STARTING POINT: Windy Gap car park, grid ref: TQ139429

Image: Leith Hill (Surrey Hills AONB)



Matching food with wine

Vincent Gasnier discusses wine and foot matching…

When it comes to matching wine with food, there are no rights and wrongs, just opinions and suggestions. Many of the old ‘rules’ are being eroded by the spread of world cuisine and fusion cooking. And wine styles, too, are evolving: big, oaky New World Chardonnays, for example, go just as well with roast chicken as the traditional choice of a light red wine.

Of course, you can enjoy a delicious bottle of any wine that may not have anything in common with the food you are eating. But, believe me, it is one of life’s greatest pleasures where the wine is in perfect harmony with the food. I knew from my earliest years that the right wine could turn the simplest family meal into an occasion – and ever since, I’ve been on a quest matching good food with perfect wine to create unforgettable meals.

Dispelling the myths

There are no strict rules that say you cannot eat what you like with whichever style of wine you choose. The long-established myth that white wine should be drunk with fish and red wine with meat is just that – a myth! It may have held some truth some two hundred years ago when meat was roasted and fish was poached. And it is certainly true that tannin in red wine reacts poorly with fish. But these days we are blessed with a much wider range of meats and fish from all over the world, as well as a greater variety of wines. There are light, lively reds that make a fantastic match for meaty fish such as fresh tuna, and heavier, oak-aged whites that go superbly well with chicken.

Equal partners

The first first factor to consider when looking for a perfect wine and food match is the relationship between the density of the food and the body of the wine. If the food is heavy, such as a stew or casserole, then you need to match it with a ripe, full wine, probably a red such as a Merlot or a Shiraz. The strength of flavour of a dish, as a general rule, should be matched by the intensity of flavour in the wine that accompanies it. Chinese and Asian dishes, for example, which use a wide array of spices to create complex and intense flavours, need to be matched with wines that are also flavour-intensive; whites such as Gewurtztraminer or Riesling make a far better match than soft, oaky Chardonnays. The acidity in the food is another important factor to consider. Dishes that include lemon, apple or vinaigrette need to be matched with wines with high acidity. Fatty or oily dishes – smoked salmon, or fish served in a beurre blanc sauce, for example – also require wines with a higher level of acidity, to cut through the oiliness of the food and add an extra taste dimension.

Some foods are notoriously difficult to match with wine: chillies, asparagus, eggs and soup. The general rule would be to opt for a fairly neutral wine with not too much acidity. The problem with chillies is that often you can taste very little else, so don’t choose an expensive wine! The flavour of asparagus is quite intense and needs a fairly intense wine to match, such as an oaked Chardonnay. It is best to avoid trying to match red wine with egg, but there are so many different egg dishes that experimentation is a must. A good starting point, however, would be an unoaked Chardonnay or white Burgundy. With soups, obviously the best wine match will depend on the soup’s flavour. In general though, I usually recommend wines with high acidity to cut through creamy soups, or perhaps a fuller red wine with its strong tannins.

The cheese course can be a tricky one; not all cheese goes well with red wine. Generally the harder the cheese the better it is with reds; soft cheese such as Camembert and Brie match well with white wines and, of course, there is the famous marriage (made in heaven, in my view!) between goat’s cheese and Sauvignon Blanc.

Saving the best for last

One of my favourite wine syles is dessert wine and it is a shame that so many people choose a white wine with their starter, a red for the main course, and then go straight to coffee with dessert. They are really missing out, as some of the best wines in the world fall into the dessert category – Barsac, Sauternes, and Montbazillac to name but a few. Delicious! The basic rule to follow is that the wine should be as sweet or even sweeter than the dessert it is paired with; if not, it will taste pallid.

Vincent Gasnier was the youngest ever Master Sommelier and wine consultant to the Houses of Parliament. This extract is taken from How to Choose Wine (978-1405326544) and appears by kind permission of Dorling Kindersley.



Champagne Styles

Paul Howard looks at Champagne…

A glass or two of Champagne is the classic way of celebrating Christmas and New Year. But while there is but one method of making Champagne, not all Champagnes are made the same. This is because Champagne is a clever blend of three key ingredients; grape varieties, vineyards and vintages.

The reason for blending is Champagne’s marginal cool climate. There is considerable weather variation every year, similar to our experience in the UK; frost, rain and inclement temperatures bring a high incidence of diabolical harvests, potentially ruinous for any winegrower. Before modern science, technology and global warming, blending was a good way to hedge your bets. In turn this created consistency; in quality, in quantity and in market prices. Champagne made a virtue out of a necessity.

Indeed, if it hadn’t originally been for the proximity of a large home market in Paris and the discovery of how to add bubbles then the Champagne region might not exist today. There are many easier and cheaper places to make quality wine. Yet Champagne became the most glorious wine brand in existence, and as it did so, various styles were created. If you like Champagne then there is much to explore, if you don’t then that may be because you just haven’t found your style…yet.

To understand the differences in style it is worth considering how Champagne is made. This is not the place to go into technical detail, suffice to say that it is a long and expensive process involving many stages, which gives the winegrower plenty of opportunities to produce recognisable differences.

First, 99.98% of modern Champagne can only be made from three permitted grape varieties, white Chardonnay and the black Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier. These have proven over centuries to be those varieties best suited to the climate and thin chalk soils. There are tiny remnants of other grape varieties left, but new plantings of those have long since been banned. Each of these three varieties have different strengths and play different roles; it is sometimes said that if Champagne was a body then Chardonnay is the skin while Pinot Noir forms the muscles and Pinot Meunier the bones.

Moreover, these grapes are usually sourced from various villages located all over the sub-regions of Champagne. Each one has an official quality rating. For example, if you see Grand Cru on the label, it means that only grapes from the top rated villages have been used, implying higher quality and price. The winemaker can therefore play with grapes from different places and different growers at different quality levels. Each parcel can be vinified separately, creating many different base wines to blend with.

Then, Champagne is normally a blend of years, creating the so-called non-vintage (NV). Each year a stock of still base wines are kept back in reserve so that they can be blended with those from the next harvest. This is to smooth out the peaks and troughs of vintage variation. For a small winegrower this might be restricted to a blend of the current year and the previous one or two years. For a large Champagne house there may be many older wines included in the mix in various percentages, subtly ensuring that the bottle you open always meets the desired quality and flavour profile of the House style. The House style is created from a recipe – meddle with it at your peril!

NV Champagne is the essential wine of any Champagne House – it is responsible for 80% of sales and so defines the individual House style. As such it is arguably the style that depends upon blending skills the most. Consequently, most NV’s are the flagship wine, even if they may not be the finest examples made in the House range, they are the most visible. Their quality can range from indifferent to magical. For example, Krug Grand Cuvée uses up to ten different vintages in the blend and that is why Krug refer to it as a Multi-vintage rather than an NV. Good NV’s will continue to improve and develop in bottle over a few more years but unfortunately, most never get the chance. Put a few NV bottles away if you can, you’ll taste the difference even after just a few months.

The vast majority of Champagne made today is in the Brut (dry) style, which is the most popular and versatile. The dryness of the final wine is controlled at the last stage of the production process, where a measured dose of sugar is used to balance the wines acidity. Most Brut wines still require a dosage, as anyone that has ever tried the acidic base wines will attest! Take this a stage further and this is how wines of different sweetnesses are created.

There are small amounts made of gently sweet wines such as demi-sec. Often known as Rich, demi-sec is the sweetest style made commercially today. The very sweet doux, once beloved of Russian Tsars, no longer exists. Today sweeter fizz is often viewed unfairly as synonymous with inferior quality, but there is a small market with just a few high quality examples on offer.

A mention too for a recent and more fashionable innovation, that of Brut Zéro, a.k.a. brut sauvage, ultra-brut, sans sucre or non-dosage. Here, no sugar is added at all, leaving the wines bone dry and austere, particularly when young. These can be brilliant with food but approach them more cautiously to drink as an apéritif.

Champagne’s acidity is in itself a major stylistic factor. The base wines are made from grapes which would be considered as barely ripe in other regions and so are high in sharp malic acid and low in sugar. During the Champagne process, this malic acid can transform naturally into the softer lactic acid. Those where this is prevented will produce tart but fresh acidity, those where it is allowed will leave much softer, broader and creamier wines. The difference between the razor focus of Lanson and the easy softness of Pol Roger is startling yet both are excellent Champagnes. The House style can also be influenced by fermentation and maturation in wood of a proportion of the base wines before blending. Bollinger is probably the most famous example where this is practised, imparting creaminess and complexity.

Vintage Champagne is only declared by a House in great years, meaning those three or four years per decade when harvest conditions are exceptional and a rigorous selection of the best grapes will make a superior wine for the most special occasions. However, some Houses declare vintages more often, as it is possible to make great wine from some special sites even in poor years if grape selection is strict enough. Every drop must be from the stated year and the base wines must be higher in alcohol than NV and the law requires considerably more minimum aging (NV is fifteen months minimum while vintage is three years minimum) and most get far longer. This means that the wine sits on the lees longer, picking up more complex and powerful yeasty flavours and aromas, often described as baked bread, toast or brioche.

The great wines from the greatest vintages can be incredibly long-lived. While they can be drunk on release, their true glory will only be revealed if they have at least a decade to mature. With power and complexity they are always best drunk with food. Recent exceptional years where vintages were widely declared include 2004, 2002, 1996 and the glorious trio of 1990, 1989 and 1988. Great examples from other years are available, depending on the House.

Blanc de blancs is a specific style meaning “white of whites.” This wine will be 100% Chardonnay and have the greatest aging potential of any Champagne. Often light and fresh when young (which makes a great apéritif style) with bottle age they develop secondary flavours of honey and nuts and fill out into elegant wines of great character. They come in NV or vintage forms.

Wines labelled Blanc de noirs are the opposite, being white wines being made solely from black grapes, Pinot Noir and/or Pinot Meunier. Traditionally this was not a term much seen on the label until Bollinger made it fashionable. As the colour is in the grape skins rather than the juice, early separation create a white wine. Full fruited, rich and weighty, they come alive with food, particularly white meats. There are some fine examples, especially from the southernmost part of the region.

The popularity of Rosé has fluctuated ever since the first example was made by Cliquot in 1777. Pink fizz is always popular in times of prosperity and is an essential part of the range. Unlike all other rosé made in Europe it is mostly created by blending red and white base wines. This method gives consistent control over the colour, ranging from onion skin through salmon to deep pink. The other way to achieve pinkness is by brief skin contact with the black grapes, then bleeding the juice off when the desired colour is achieved. This is hard to control and known as saignée. Rosé ranges from delicate and nuanced all the way to the muscular and powerful. Sometimes frivolous froth, most are best drunk young while the colour and red berry fruit flavours remain intact, but there are some seriously good examples.

What then, of the Prestige Cuvées? These are the no-expense spared wines, famously including the likes of Cristal (Roederer), Dom Pérignon (Möet), Belle Époque (Perrier-Jouët), Vieille Vignes Françaises (Bollinger), Clos des Goisses (Philipponnat), S (Salon), Clos de Mesnil (Krug) and Le Clos Saint Hilaire (Billecart-Salmon). These and more besides are the ultimate luxury Champagnes, designed to reflect the very best quality a Champagne House can attain. All are stylistically different. They might be vintage, they might be single vineyard and they might be a blend, but all push the envelope and all are expensive. Are they worth it? The top ones undoubtedly are, as long as they are given the required long bottle age – so if you open one, get dressed up and make it a very special occasion.

Champagne isn’t just one drink – there is an amazing palette for the winegrower to play with. The Champenois frequently say “chacun à son gôut”, which means, to each his (or her) own taste. Why not discover yours this festive season?

Paul Howard is the publisher of www.winealchemy.com.



Thoroughly intriguing chocolate from a local chocolatier

Everyone loves chocolate don’t they? Whether it’s as a ‘thank you for inviting me’ gift, a present for a special person – or just sheer self-indulgence. But there’s chocolate and there’s very special chocolate, and the handcrafted chocolate produced in rural Sussex by Noble & Stace Chocolatiers is simply mouth-wateringly special.

Mike Noble practices his magical art at their chocolate kitchen nestled in the South Downs National Park, and for a very good reason. Much of their chocolate uses flavoursome ingredients sourced locally from wineries, a gin distillery, coffee roasters, a mint farm, a craft brewer and intriguingly even a natural mineral water producer.

“The first chocolates we produced eighteen months ago were the result of a collaboration with a small craft brewery a few miles away,” said Mike. “I started working with Langham Brewery by exploring the different flavours of their ales to find one that best complemented our chocolate, and produced a tablette that was very well received – once people got the idea that ale and chocolate makes a tasty combination. Their award winning hoppy ale was blended with a rich dark chocolate ganache in place of cream and butter.”

As an occasional chocolate binger I knew it wouldn’t take much to tease my palate, but in my conversation with Mike I was quickly becoming intrigued. Chocolate and craft ale? Well, sure, why not? But what he said next literally took my breath away.
“I then went to completely the opposite end of the scale, and got in touch with the South Downs Water Company. Instead of the traditional truffle combination of chocolate, cream, and butter I took out the cream and the butter – and replaced it with a mineral water.” said Mike, smiling at my bemused expression.

“I knew that would surprise you. It surprises many people. Water and chocolate don’t normally mix that well, but it does if you get it in the right quantity – and it gives a quite different texture. In a traditional truffle cream and butter is quite indulgent, and it’s creamy and quite rich. But unlike the mineral water one it doesn’t have an instant melt in the mouth. The best way I can describe our Pure Mineral Water Truffles is that they’re a bit like a sorbet – which has a very clean kind of melt and a rich taste – and nobody would think that it didn’t have the cream and the butter. And of course it’s a dairy-free option that increasingly customers are looking for.”

Chocolate and ale? Chocolate and mineral water? Surely Mike’s chocolate ingredients cupboard had run out of surprises?

“Our customer research revealed, perhaps not surprisingly, a love of Champagne truffles. We are surrounded by vineyards around here, and so I soon produced my equivalent of a Champagne truffle using a local English sparkling wine. That really captured people’s imagination so I do a lot now with different vineyards in Sussex and Hampshire. It’s not a massively powerful alcoholic taste, but the fruitiness of the wine really comes through making a really nice smooth truffle.”

Mike paused for effect, and of course he had the advantage of knowing what was coming next.

”Just two weeks ago we launched our new Chilgrove Gin Truffle range! We worked closely with the Chichester-based distillery’s husband and wife team to develop some recipes – and we now have a very zesty gin and lime truffle, which is quite subtle on the gin. And we also have our gin and lemon, which is stronger on the gin and with a little less on the lemon. And of course, as you’d expect there is a gin and tonic truffle too – with a little bit of orange in it giving it a lovely citrus mix.”

Noble & Stace Chocolatiers make everything by hand – melting and moulding and creating in their spotless food hygiene five-rated chocolate kitchen. There are no automated industrial-scale production machines. All the equipment used is typical of any domestic kitchen. And it is their hands-on approach that makes their chocolate so distinctive.

“The problem with mass-produced chocolate is that the big manufacturers have to provide for a very long shelf-life – and in so doing they need to add extra ingredients to achieve this, which does make the flavour different,” explained Mike. “We produce chocolate mostly to order which means that our chocolate is freshly produced and in small volumes. We all also eat with our eyes – so we are presenting something that is unique looking, and looks more appealing as it hasn’t been run off a machine. I’m piping it by hand, I’m adding something to it, all the truffles are dipped by hand. It is a labour-intensive way of doing it, but that’s what makes it special.”

I asked Mike where we can go to enjoy the Noble & Stace chocolate experience – something I’d personally recommend without hesitation given the tantalising and surprisingly original flavours I tasted in their chocolate kitchen.

“We mostly stock through local suppliers like farm shops, delis and cafes – and farmers’ markets. My first stockist was the farm shop and café at Cowdray Park in Midhurst. Increasingly we’re being approached to make special orders for restaurants, hotels and events like weddings. We did a wedding recently where they wanted gifts for their guests, and being autumn we created little gift boxes inside which nestled chocolate acorns and oak leaves. But word is spreading and we’re getting enquiries from stockists much farther afield. And of course, you can place your own personal order on our website. We can make up special orders just for you – for example a pick and mix of six sparkling wine truffles and six peppermint creams.”

Mike Noble has certainly introduced my taste buds to some surprising flavour combinations and unfettered delight enjoyed when a freshly hand crafted chocolate from his kitchen melts away in your mouth. Chocolatier extraordinaire!

Phil Kemp is a freelance writer and photographer based in Godalming. www.weyriver.co.uk

Noble & Stace Chocolatiers.
Website: www.nobleandstace.co.uk, phone: 01730 814886 or email: mike@nobleandstace.co.uk.



The Story of Port

Paul Howard looks at port…

Port is made in Portugal’s northeastern Douro Valley. The key to Port is in its fortification and subsequent maturation into a variety of styles. Port is named after Oporto, where the river Douro meets the Atlantic. This is where Port is usually shipped from but its vineyards lie some fifty miles upriver in a dramatic and inhospitable landscape of precipitous hills, thin soils and extreme summer heat. 90% of the land has a gradient steeper than one in three, so vineyards were created in narrow terraces hacked out by hand over a period of more than 300 years, a process only recently augmented by dynamite and bulldozer. These terraces have turned the Douro into a giant staircase and a World Heritage Site.

Port is living British colonial history and is steeped in tradition. Because of almost constant Anglo-French antagonism, Britain turned to Portugal as a staunch ally to slake its thirst for heavy and sweet red wines. In 1678, the English discovered a monastery that was fortifying red wine with Brandy. This made the wines richer and more robust to withstand long sea journeys. Eventually, this “blackstrap” became Port.

Port is the oldest geographically demarcated wine region in the world. In 1756, laws were introduced to protect the wine from adulteration and fraud. By then, merchants controlled the trade and were investing in vineyards (known as quintas), a situation that remains to this day. Many of these shippers were British and Port is perhaps the quintessential Englishman’s drink. Merchants also came from other seafaring nations including Portugal, Holland, Spain, Germany and Norway. Between them they have created a range of styles to suit the palates of various export markets – there really is something for everyone.

Port is usually a blend, of grape varieties, of vineyards and of vintages, that creates a consistent house style. There are eighty authorised grape varieties, many of which are Portuguese natives. The top five red grapes are tinta barroca, touriga naçional, touriga franca, tinta cão and tinta roriz.

Given the steep and narrow terraces, most grapes are hand-picked. Until the 1960s all grapes were trodden by human feet in shallow stone troughs called lagares. Since then, mechanisation and electricity have gradually taken over but laborious foot-treading is still used to create the best Ports as this is the optimal way to extract colour and tannin from the grapes.

Fermentation starts spontaneously, so producing alcohol. However this is deliberately stopped after only 24-36 hours by the addition of 77% pure grape spirit. This fortification leaves the wine sweet and raises the alcohol level to around 20%. This is young Port; fiery, tannic and completely undrinkable, a wine that will need to be tamed by long maturation.To avoid the heat, the wine it is taken down river to the shippers lodges at Vila Nova de Gaia, a town facing Oporto. The cooler and more humid conditions there allow time and transformation. The choice made between aging the wine in either glass bottles or old wooden casks will fundamentally affect the style and price, so let’s take a look at some of the main types of Port available.

The vast majority of Port produced is Ruby Port, a youthful and fiery red port that is relatively inexpensive, simple and made for immediate drinking. These are blended non-vintage wines that are matured in a variety of old wooden casks, cement tanks and stainless steel for about three years before being filtered and bottled. They usually carry a shippers or supermarket brand name and will not develop any further. A far superior version to look for is Premium Ruby Port, where a proportion of older wine is added to the young wine. These offer deeper colour, more complexity and depth and are usually labelled as “Reserve“. They are a far more satisfying and interesting drink for little extra outlay.

While it has often been said that the first duty of Port is to be red, White Port follows a similar journey to the Ruby and Premium Ruby Port just described, except that white grapes such as verdelho and malvasia are employed and the best are aged exclusively in wood for deeper colour and nutty flavours. They also come in a range of sweetnesses, from seco at around 17% (these taste off-dry), to the intensely sweet and viscous lágrima. White Port makes for a good apéritif or refreshing longer drinks when chilled with tonic.

So far, so relatively humble. Aged Tawny Port offers a step-change in quality, a red wine that has been aged in wooden casks for lengthy periods. Over time these wines gently oxidise, exchanging their red colour for deepening shades of amber-brown. The style depends on the time spent in the wood and the initial quality of the wine used. Expect nuts, dried fruits and citrus flavours with a satisfying smoothness. As they age (the allowed indicated ages are 10, 20, 30 and over 40 years) they get more delicate, rarer and more expensive. The age shown is only an average approximation as the wine is a blend of older and younger wines. Look out also for Colheita (pronounced col-yate-ta), essentially this is a specialised Tawny, made from a single year and the label will carry the date of the harvest and the date of the bottling. Finally, beware of so-called “Fine Tawny”, a cheap wine that is either a mix of young Ruby and White Port or is a Ruby port subjected to heat to accelerate aging. They will show no age indication on the label and not much interest in the glass either.

Vintage Port is the most expensive style of red Port and the one that commands all the attention, being the Shipper’s flagship wine. These are the pinnacle of quality, can age for over a century and account for less than 1% of all Port made. These are made solely from the best grapes of a single harvest, hence the vintage date. Given that each harvest is unique and dependent on the growing season, only outstanding years are “declared” by the producer. Even then, a declaration is only made if the producer is confident that there is market demand.

This is because stocks of Vintage Port from previous declarations will still be maturing. Declarations occur perhaps three times in a decade and some great vintages were not declared because of insufficient demand. Vintage Port maturation is completely different, being bottled from wood at only two years old. It therefore matures very slowly in bottle over decades, throwing a large sediment and must therefore be decanted. Rarely released before their tenth year, most are designed to go on maturing and can be drunk from around their twentieth year. These long-lived fine wines reward the patient and the wealthy with unsurpassed elegance and finesse.

How then to convey some of the excellence of a Vintage Port without all the wait and the expense? Late Bottled Vintage (LBV) was created for that and does what it says on the tin. It’s a wine made from a single harvest year but bottled much later than Vintage Port, typically at age six rather than at age two. Because of the extra years in wood they are ready to drink earlier, having already thrown most of their sediment in cask. Furthermore, if filtered they can be enjoyed without decanting. However, the best LBVs to look out for are not filtered and will also be given another three years aging in bottle, so these get nearer to true Vintage Port in expression.

Still with me? Then onto Single Quinta Vintage (SQV), the final style featured in this article. SQVs are red ports made from the grapes of a single harvest but unlike Vintage Port only use those grapes grown on a single estate. These wines are designed to spotlight a shippers’ best estate and are made in good rather than outstanding years, so they are usually less expensive than Vintage Port. In all other respects they are made and matured just like Vintage Port, can develop for many years and will need decanting. These wines are usually not released until considered ready to drink. In short, SQV offers the essence of Vintage Port but from lesser years, though the best examples will rival full Vintage Port in quality but at more affordable prices.

This article can only attempt a short description of one of the world’s great wines and cover some of the main styles made. The proof is in the glass, so please turn over for six excellent examples designed to show that there is a Port style to suit everyone.

Just remember, Port is for life, not just for Christmas.

Paul Howard is the publisher of Wine Alchemy (www.winealchemy.com).