Trying port wine in Porto

We don't drink port. We know nothing about it. But we are open to learning, and hey, we are in Porto. 

Which port maker should we visit? I'm sure they are all good. We went to Graham's because 1) it was away from all of the crowds 2) we have a good friend named Graham Monroe, so it must be good. Seriously. This is the kind of logic that we used, and it turned out fabulously well.

As soon as we entered the lobby, we could sense the not-messing-around kind of quality this place has:

Wait a minute. "Graham's" doesn't sound very Portuguese. What gives? Well, here is your quick overview of Port. Back in the 1700's, England was at war with France, as was often the case. So the English couldn't buy their favorite Bordeaux or Burgundies thanks to a trade embargo. So they went to their old ally Portugal and started importing wine in barrels from the Douro region near Porto. (There was no bottling capability in Porto at the time.) Problem was, the wine spoiled on the boats during the voyage. So they had the brilliant idea of "fortifying" the wine with Brandy. At 70% alcohol and relatively flavorless, the Brandy stopped the fermentation of the Portuguese wine, and comprising roughly 1/5th of the total volume, upped the wine's alcohol by volume to 20%. English and Scottish entrepreneurs with names like Graham, Taylor, Sandeman, Cockburn, and Dow all started Port labels in the late 1700s and early 1800s. These are still the dominant brands today. Make sense?

Here are a few of the old bottles of Graham's port we saw on display. I have an affinity for old, classy wine labels:

Graham's apparently knows what it is doing. Wine Spectator named its 2000 vintage as the best of the whole year. It got 98 points. We could have bought a bottle, but hey, we are on a budget:

The tour was very informative. Here is Cam in barrel room where they store the "Tawny" style ports. Tawny ports are much browner in color than the Ruby ports, as they take on the coloring of the French oak barrels:

The cool thing about going to such an old winemaker is that they have...you guessed it... really old wine still on hand. Inside this barrel is some port that hasn't seen the light of day since 1952. They bottled this two years ago in a limited release for Queen Elizabeth's diamond jubilee:

The really really good stuff is unfiltered and actually continues to age in the bottle. This is what is known as "Vintage Port." Only ~3 vintages out of every 10 are good enough to get the designation of a "vintage year" and get to go this route of bottle aging. They have kept bottles from all of their vintage years and on special occasions the owners pull a bottle down to see how time has treated it. The oldest they still have is shown below. 1868!!!!!!

Here is Cam with the three Tawny ports she got to taste. We are both decidedly NOT Tawny people. We prefer the Ruby style, as it is a much closer flavor to table wine:

Reading this review from the Financial Times wine critic made us pretty excited to try the 2001 Vintage Port:

Here I am with that 2001 Vintage Port. It was excellent:

We had a great time at Graham's and would recommend it to anyone visiting Porto. We aren't about to start drinking port on a weekly or even monthly basis, but we'll at least be a bit more literate when the dessert menu is placed in front of us.