 |
|
|
American Port. "It's time to give a new, young, vibrant look to port," says Antonio Saraiva, manager of Rozes, a port house, as quoted by Florence Fabricant in The New York Times (8/3/05). Antonio is heeding that call by introducing a "line of ports in color-coded bottles, including an aged but fruity ruby port and a tawny, to be served before or after dinner." The color coding can come in handy, because "port, a fortified wine," is generally divided "into three main categories: white (from white grapes); vintage or vintage style, including ruby ports (rich, dark and fruity); and tawny (wood aged, with a nutty color and flavor)."
But, actually, here in America (which "overtook Britain as the biggest importer of vintage port in 2002") the focus is on "single estates" ports, known as "quintas." The quintas are "less costly" than vintage ports, and are "designed for drinking sooner." Both factors make the quintas a good match for the value-driven, time-pressed American drinker. There's also this about quintas: "They offer cachet for consumers, especially Americans who dote on single-estate coffees, chocolates, teas and olive oils." In addition, it turns out that Americans simply like the taste of "young vintage ports to mature ones." That would never happen back over in Europe: "To admit something like that would be frowned upon in England," says Bartholomew Broadbent, a port importer.
"But in America," says Bartholomew, "you're drinking expensive, highly concentrated, high-alcohol California cabernets very young. To go from a big young table wine to young vintage port is a natural progression." That Americans, unlike Europeans, like to have their Port at restaurants is another factor: "Something chocolate is standard on every American dessert list, and port is one of the few wines that go with chocolate," he says. Currently, "there are more than 30,000 growers of grapes for Port in Portugal, most of whom cultivate just a few acres." The more entrepreneurial farmers are responding to the American demand with unconventional planting methods that enable tractors to "till the soil as well as new processing techniques that obviate "having workers crush the grapes with their feet."
Marmalade Skies. In England, where "coffee now rivals tea as the national drink, curry is more popular than roast beef, and they serve California Chardonnay in pubs, travel writer Jan Morris, herself half English and half Welsh, is a holdout for Marmalade. As she explains in a Wall Street Journal essay: "I give (Marmalade) a capital M because I am not thinking of "the sweet sticky stuff served up in plastic packages at freeway cafes, but of the dark, tangy Marmalade, preferably made of oranges from Spain, which possesses in my mind an abstract quality -- Marmaladeness, perhaps.
Or perhaps not: "All too often," writes Jan, "I am offered fancy hybrids or substitutes: orange-and-lemon marmalade, marmalade with whisky or bandy in it, or elderflower flavoring, jam-like marmalade imported from France, supermarket marmalade with artificial colouring or numerical additives, marmalade more like fruit jelly, Ye Olde Teashoppe Marmalade made in an industrial estate somewhere ..." What Jan wants is the kind of Marmalade she once saw in "a film clip of the last of the aristocratic British prime ministers, Alec Douglas-Home, eating his breakfast before attending some vital conference," who was "almost converted to Toryism by observing, bang on the table in front of him, with a spoon in the top, a proudly labeled pot of Cooper's Original Thick Cut Oxford Marmalade.
Yum. Sometimes, Jan says, she might "buy Oxford Marmalade for the sake of the unaltered label" or "stock up with unpretentious Marmalade from Women's Institute stalls." Or, she says "there is a farm shop on the M6 Motorway to which I make regular pilgrimages because of its range of staunch northern Marmalades and wholesome organic products from the Prince of Wales's estates in Cornwall. Or, she just makes it herself, "so dark, so rich in shred, striking such a perfect balance between the sweet and the sour, the set and the runny ..." And Jan enjoys it, "just as much with a dinner beefsteak as ... on a breakfast slice of toast ... (hedonistically with my sausages, austerely with apples)."
Tim Manners, editor
|
