FORTIFIED WINES

A fortified wine is a wine to which brandy has been added during or after fermentation. The addition of brandy raises the alcohol level high enough to kill the yeast, thus arresting the fermentation. Fortified wines vary in alcoholic strength and range from dry to sweet according to how much sugar in the must had been converted to alcohol before fortification.

Many wine-producing countries make fortified wines. The ‘‘classics’’ are Port, Sherry, and Madeira. However, this is not intended to dismiss the significance of some of the other great and historic fortified wines. There are the less revered, a good example being vermouth, which is a fortified wine flavored with herbs and spices and is not often given its due respect. There is also the important category of vin doux naturel, French for ‘‘fortified wine,’’ which was pioneered in 1299 by Arnaldus de Villanova, a Catalan alchemist, working in Montpellier. Indeed, France produces some delicious fortified wines, most prolifically in the Rhône Valley, including Muscat de Beaumes-de-Venise and Banyuls.

Muscat is one of the most common grapes grown for the production of fortified wines, and sadly some of the best producing areas are disappearing. Setubal, a peninsula close to Lisbon in Portugal that is being gobbled up by property developers as the city expands, is one of the greatest losses to the world wine community.

Wines of the few remaining producers, most notably José Maria da Fonseca, rival the world’s greatest and, with stocks in cask dating back to the 1880s, are some of the longest lived.

Spain’s Malaga is another disappearing region. It once produced about 2.4 million nine-liter cases (mc) a year, but fell victim to phylloxera, forcing hundreds of producers to abandon their businesses. Today, there are just a couple left, making under 80,000 cases. Sicily’s Marsala, also in decline, formerly reached close to 7 mc in sales and has now dropped down to around a million, most of which is cooking wine.

The United States makes fortified wines—officially classed as ‘‘dessert wines’’ in government terminology—and because the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade protocol to protect European place names was never signed, some U.S. producers use names that are recognized by the rest of the world as coming only from specific regions in Europe. Such wines cannot be exported. The same applies to some wines made in South Africa and Australia, although they have since signed the agreement and these wines will soon be marketed under brand names, such as Galway Pipe, without mentioning the word ‘‘Port.’’

Many other fine fortified wines are made in Australia, including Muscat and Tokay in Rutherglen by such noteworthy producers as Bailey’s and Morris Wines. South Africa’s Cape also excels in fortified wines, but none of them shares the success of Port and Madeira from Portugal or Sherry from Spain.

Port. 

Port, the king of fortified wine, comes from the Douro, a strictly demarcated region in Portugal, and the entire production is rigorously controlled by appellation regulations. Port’s name is derived from the town of Oporto at the mouth of the Douro River, but the Douro, the world’s second oldest demarcated region (after Hungary’s Tokaji), predates Port. Judging by its Roman ruins, wine production in this part of Portugal has an ancient history. Initially a dry table wine–producing region, its fortified wine developed when British traders shipped wine back to England late in the seventeenth century and the long sea journey required fortification of the wine for it to survive the primitive shipping conditions. Today, Port is produced by adding brandy to the must within 24 to 48 hours of the beginning of fermentation, at which point the wine is usually around 7 percent alcohol by volume (abv) and is raised to 20 percent abv. This kills the yeast and fermentation stops, leaving a wine with significant residual sugar.

Most Port is red, but there are also white Ports, and in 2008 production of the first rose´ Port was announced. Among the reds, the majority is bottled after three years of aging in stainless steel tanks or oak casks. Those sold for immediate consumption are called ruby or tawny, depending on the depth of color. Some Ports are deemed of sufficient quality and structure to warrant special aging in bottle or barrel. High-quality tawnies may be age-worthy enough to warrant 20 years or more in barrel. Vintage Port is top-quality Port that generally has the potential to age 50 years or more in the bottle; the earliest known vintage Port still available, the 1815 Ferreira, continues to make thought-provoking drinking. Other styles of Port include late-bottled vintage (LBV), which is bottled between four and six years of age; reserve Port; colheita, a tawny from a single year; and crusted. There are more than a hundred indigenous grape varieties used for Port production, the best-known being Touriga Nacional, Touriga Francesa, Tinta Roriz, Tinta Amarela, Tinta Cão, and Tinta Barroca.

Port exports in 2006 totaled 8.7 mc, with a total value of a330 million. Almost a third of this went to France. Other important destinations included the Dutch market, Belgium, Britain, and Germany. The United States imported about 470,000 cases of Port, which represented 51 percent of all fortified wine brought into the country; the largest imported brands were Warre’s and Sandeman.

Sherry. 

Sherry (or Jerez), from Andalucia in southwestern Spain, is the second of the three classic fortified wines. Though Port has fully recovered from its depression years (the 1960s), Sherry is still struggling to find its footing in today’s market. Exports were down to 4.6 mc in 2007, a 20 percent decline from four years earlier. Sherry is where Riesling was 15 years ago and, like Riesling, is the darling of many top wine writers, such as Jancis Robinson, Hugh Johnson, and Michael Broadbent.

Sherry is quite different from other fortified wines. In the first place, fortification takes place after fermentation rather than during it; thus, the wines are initially fully dry. Sherry’s two most unique features, however, are flor and the solera. Flor, an unattractive-looking but beneficial yeast that develops in the barrels of fino Sherry, protects the wine and gives it a distinctive tang. Those Sherries that do not develop flor become palo cortado or oloroso; those that lose their flor become amontillado. Flor resembles yellowy cottage cheese and floats on top of the wine. It is rather volatile and needs to be kept alive by feeding on nutrients in the Sherry. For this reason, Sherry undergoes a solera method of aging, in which young wine is added to older wine barrels to replenish these nutrients. The solera system conceptually acts like a waterfall in that the final barrels are a mix of very old wine, and every vintage of wine eventually reaches the blend.

Three grape varieties are grown in Sherry’s 26,000 acres of vineyards. The primary grape, Palomino, is used for most styles. Pedro Ximenez and Moscatel (Muscat of Alexandria) are used as sweetening agents for some blends and by themselves for very sweet dessert wines. Finos tend to be about 15.5 percent abv, whereas oloroso is around 18 percent and can go higher.

Sherry production in 2006 was 5.4 mc, down from an average of 7.8 mc in the previous four years. Exports in 2006 were valued at a76.3 million. The United States imported 278,000 cases of Sherry in 2006, roughly a third of the total imports of fortified wine. The largest-selling Sherry brand in the United States was Harveys Bristol Cream, which alone accounted for about 100,000 cases.

Madeira. 

The third classic fortified wine is from the Portuguese island of Madeira, 400 miles off the coast of Morocco, directly in the trade winds between Europe and North America. In the colonial era, all passing ships used to stop in Madeira to stock up on provisions and would use casks of Madeira wine as ballast in the bottom of the boats. It was discovered that the wine in the holds was heated and improved during the transit to the West Indies and America from Madeira, and for a while it was required that the best Madeiras be treated by being sailed around the world twice. It became the largest selling wine in North America, where the illustrious following included the likes of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington (who drank a pint of Madeira daily for dinner), and such historical events as the signing of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence were toasted with Madeira.

America remained the largest market for Madeira until Prohibition, at which time, with the collapse of sales, most producers had to uproot the vines and plant other crops. In 1988, Madeira experienced a revival when the Port trade’s Symington family invested in the ailing Madeira Wine Company and relaunched it in the United States.

The unique difference in the method of production of Madeira is that the wine is heated after fortification for a minimum of three months to simulate the voyage through the tropics, at a temperature of 115°F to 120°F (about 45°C). The result of this maderization is a wine that is indestructible — it does not go off even after a bottle has been opened. The grapes used for Madeira include four white varieties, which are also synonymous with styles of wine: Sercial, Verdelho, Bual (or Boal), and Malmsey (Malvasia), from driest to sweetest. The red variety Negra Mole today is also considered a ‘‘classic’’ variety.

Total production of Madeira for drinking in 2005—not counting a large volume that is salted and sold for cooking purposes, much of it to France—was a little  more than 100,000 cases. Major markets are Britain, Germany, Japan, and the United States, which imported 18,500 cases in 2006.

By Bartholomew Broadbent  in "The Business of Wine - An Encyclopedia", edited by Geralyn Brostrom and Jack Brostrom, Greenwood Press, USA, 2009, excerpts pp.101-103. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.