The shelves of decent bars are decorated with many bottles. But, looking closer, most often it turns out that most of them are consumables and ingredients for cocktails, and the rest are fashionable and recognizable brands from those that are guaranteed to provide “turnover”. And there is a corrosive guest or just the mood is such that a person wants to be surprised with something like that!
Do bars need rare drinks that not every visitor can appreciate?
There is no single answer to this question. Such drinks can gather dust on the shelves for years. But if the bottle is open, it should be drunk quickly enough. But still, it seems to me that the assortment should definitely include drinks aimed at connoisseurs.
Here, for example, port wine. An infrequent ingredient in cocktails, but as an independent drink, it is a rather specific product in the bar assortment. Identical bottles, at first glance, but one costs 1000 rubles, and the second – 1000 euros. Why?
In the entire thirty-year history of perhaps the most prestigious wine rating – the annual Top 100 list from the American magazine WineSpectator, experts have evaluated half a million wines from 5 continents, and only 70 of them received a score of 100 points. Of these 70, nine are ports. The ninth 2007 point port was Dow’s Vintageport 2010, the 2012 ranking was published in early XNUMX. That is, dry statistics says that in absolute and relative terms, the largest number of outstanding wines is made by a small wine-growing area in Portugal that produces port wine.
In the USSR, and then in the countries that once made up the great Soviet empire, the attitude towards “port wine” was almost unanimous: it is a drink of the so-called “bohemia” – poets, writers, artists and musicians, and completely degraded and declassed elements, called “homeless “. However, there was sometimes no difference between these two groups, and the first often joins the ranks of the second. “Port wine” was sung in their work by the drunken classics of Soviet literature, it was drunk “from the throat” by actors, directors, musicians. The drink, by the way, is sung in the songs of “Time Machine” and in the book “Entertaining Narcology” by its leader Andrei Makarevich.
Why is the word “port” in quotation marks? Yes, because in common between the drink that we know as “Port wine 777” (or 333, or 555 – these surrogates are often produced under mysterious numbers), and the noblest “wine from the city of Porto” – this is what portwine means – practically none.
Port wine can only be made in a strictly controlled area along the Douro River from grape varieties permitted by the State Institute of Port Wine and according to technology strictly controlled by this institute. The wine has a bright taste of grape juice due to the peculiarities of the technology – the fermentation of the wine is very short (48 hours) and the yeast does not have time to eat all the sugar, the fermentation is stopped by grape distillate, often made from the same grapes. It turns out a sweet and fortified wine, with a strength of at least 19% alcohol. Such wine perfectly tolerated transportation and could be stored for a long time, which is why the British loved it so much, who did not have access to French wines due to the wars that lasted from the beginning of the XNUMXth to the XNUMXth centuries.
A little about the traditions and types of port wine
The vast majority of famous port wine houses are English or Scottish: Dow’s, Taylor’s, Warre’s, Sandeman and so on. There is probably no other wine in the world around which so many rituals have been developed, port wine is an old noble British tradition.
A description of the varieties of port would require an entire book. In port wines, perhaps, the most difficult gradation is more than 10 categories. In short, we can say that port wine is divided into two large groups – Ruby and Tawny. The former are bottled after a short aging in barrels, while the latter spend the entire period of aging in a barrel (often 30 or even more years). The best ports have an indication of the year of harvest, the so-called “vintage”. The Port Wine Institute does not declare “vintage” every year, only the most successful vintages.
Port is probably the best choice if you’re considering wine as an investment: due to its high alcohol content and high sugar, this wine is more stable than dry wines and can be forgiving in storage conditions.
Last year, TaylorFladgate introduced a unique wine to wealthy connoisseurs, the oldest vintage of port ever sold – 1855. It was put into barrels 6 years before the abolition of serfdom in Russia and ten years before the phylloxera destroyed the vineyards of Europe. The wine is unique because it is tawny, it has been in barrels all this time in the family warehouse and was simply forgotten. According to those who had a chance to try it – $ 3500, which costs a bottle of 155-year-old wine, it is worth the money. Fresh, dry and absolutely alive.
Is it possible to sell such wine in a bar? I think it’s easy. If the bartender wants, he can make anyone drink anything. Well, we are certainly not talking about brake fluid, cologne and liquid from the sweat of the feet. Although, there are bartenders who are sure that it is easy to breed for this too … However, then they will have to drink it for brotherhood.