Tawny Port gets its name from its colour. Put very simply, tawny Port is brown Port, wines that have lost their deep red colour through long ageing in wooden casks, here called pipes. The Port industry makes a number of wines, all called tawny, that range in quality from the cheap and not always cheerful to some of the most fine and complex wines on earth..
If you were brought up on the traditional English view that Port is a red wine, you will be surprised by how rarely Vintage Port is by the shippers in the Douro, or at the lodges In Vila Nova da Gaia. In the heat of the Portuguese climate a glass of delicious tawny, gently chilled is far appealing. Tawny is a great summer wine, wherever you live.
Fine is only a semi-official term, used by some, but not all shippers to indicate the cheapest wines in the range. Expect to pay the same for a Fine Tawny as you would for a simple Ruby Port.
Now officially known as Reserve Tawny they can be very good and, like Reserve ruby, can be very good value for money. The only drawback is that you don't know how old the wine is without specialist knowledge. They will vary from the youngsters at six to eight years old to wines of great complexity aged for over twenty years in cask. It is for this reason that the category is shrinking. Many brands formerly sold as 'old' are now being sold with a specified age, poutting them in to the next category.
After ten years of cask-maturation gives a raisiny nuttiness to the wines. At twenty the dried fruit character should have faded to give a greater depth of marzipan and dried peel. These wines can have enormous intensity and complexity. Ten and twenty year-old wines are quite delicious, and not too expensive. Thirty and forty year old wines can be marvellous, with caramel and toffee hints overlying figs and prunes, but they are expensive, and sometimes they do not offer good value for money. Keep an eye on the Tastings section to see what has been scored well recently.
These are blended for consistency, so if you like the first bottle of, say, Warre's Optima, or Ramos Pinto Evramoira you should enjoy subsequent ones.
One very interesting category, albeit a rare one on many export markets is colheita. These are the wine on one vintage but tawny in colour; in contrast with vintage. Unlike the indicated age tawnies, they will vary from vintage to vintage but will also vary depending on when they were bottled. The rules require that they be bottled no sooner than the eighth year after the harvest but his can be extended quite considerably. There are still occasional releases of wines that have spent ninety or a hundred years in wood.
Tawny Ports of all types are released when ready to drink. One or two producers, like Dirk Niepoort, will tell you that their wines will improve in bottle, and I can confirm this to be true, but such maturation there is can be very slow and almost imperceptible. Far better to use the space in your cellar for Vintage Port and buy tawny when you want to drink it.
Tawny Port can be served slightly chilled. This helps balance the sweetness and brings out the complexities on the palate, and makes Tawny the idea Port for summer drinking. As with all fine wines, over-chilling will kill the flavours.
In cooler climates or in the depth of winter it can be enjoyed at room temperature, but try it for yourself, preferably side by side with an un-chilled glass and see which you prefer.
Try tawny as an aperitif, with olives, ham and, especially, roast almonds, or after the meal with cheese. Avoid the powerful cheeses like Stilton though and serve something milder.