A Brief History of Puff Pastry with Recipe
August 30, 2024
Pastries, flaky and buttery, light enough to melt on your tongue. Sweet and savory, fresh from the oven or sitting in a box at work;…
Read This PostIt’s Wine Wednesday! And since we’re featuring Portugal this week, we’re featuring one of our favorites, cocktails with port wine (or Porto). Port is actually a fortified wine, which means it is produced with the addition of alcohol (a neutral grape spirit called aguardente) during fermentation. This stops the fermentation and results in more sugars being left in the wine.
Port is therefore usually a sweet wine and is served mostly as a dessert wine or digestif, although drier varieties do exist. The two most common types of Port are “Ruby” Port, which is not aged in wood, thereby preserving the ruby red color, and “Tawny” Port, which is aged in wooden barriques, creating a more golden-brown color.
Learn more about Porto on a cooking vacation in Portugal.
So besides serving it with dessert, what is Port good for? It makes excellent port cocktails! And while I personally usually like the nuttiness of a Tawny Port, in port wine cocktails Ruby Port’s color makes a spectacular looking beverage!
Here are some classic Port wine cocktails!
This is a refreshing summertime cocktail with port and lemon and can be made without vodka if you want less alcohol.
See also our favorite sangria recipes from Portugal.
This rum and rye port cocktail is named after Brooklyn’s Suburban Handicap horse race that was run during the Nineteenth Century.
Check out one of our favorite Portugal culinary tours.
A recipe from master mixologist David Wondrich.
This bourbon and port cocktail reputedly hails from San Francisco’s Sir Francis Drake Hotel during the prohibition period.
Learn more about Portuguese wines.
What are your favorite recipes using Port? Do you have any savory or dessert recipes featuring Port that you can share?
Check out also some of our favorite Portuguese recipes:
By Peg Kern
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