Port is one of the world's great wines and its creation is one of man's most improbable achievements. The Douro river, which runs from Portugal's border with Spain through the mountains of the Serra do Marao to Oporto, has gouged deep canyons through the granite and slate, in places up to 2,000 feet deep. The area was a wilderness of steep-sided gorges baked in a summer sun of over 100 degrees. No soil existed on these 60 degree slopes, every particle has been put there by man.

Starting in the mid 18th century these slopes were dug, blasted and stabilised, terraces were created, some 15 feet high, infill was brought in baskets on men's backs. Today there are over fifty miles of these extraorinary earthworks lining the Douro, like a titanic sculpture in Nature. Inhospitable to man, but excellent for the hardy vine, which thrives in adverse conditions like this. Hard work to create, these terraces are equally hard work to harvest. Each terrace is reached by steps, each bunch of grapes is transported in baskets on the backs of the descendants of the men who built the terraces.

These grapes, so hard won, are used in Port in an unusual way. When the wine is partially fermented it's added to barrels that are quarter-filled with brandy. This stops the fermentation, leaving the wine sweet, but strong in alcohol, usually around 20% by volume. Under normal conditions stopping the fermentation so early would result in a pale-coloured wine, but in Port the deep colour is achieved by treading the grapes prior to fermentation. This ensures that the pigment in the skins is tranferred to the must. The human foot is perfectly adapted for crushing grapes since it doesn't break the pips, which if broken would add a bitterness to the wine. There are still some quintas were this is still done, but now the process is largely mechanised.

Like sherry and champagne, port is a blended wine, a product of the grapes of many small growers. The Port lodges age the blended wine in 'pipes'- 115 gallon barrels - for a minimum of two years, up to even fifty. In approximately three years out of ten, when the growing conditions are at their finest, this becomes the increasingly rare 'vintage port'. The other years' production becomes the blended ports of the commercial variety. A relatively recent compromise between these two is the 'Late Bottled Vintage'. Wine from good vintages is kept unblended and aged in barrel rather than bottle, where it matures faster. It's well-suited to the modern world, since it's matured quickly, yet still retains some of the character of a good vintage port at a much lower cost.

Here are a few LBV's that I like, which have the benefit of a reasonable cost:

Tuke Holdsworth 1992, £10.29 from Dunnes Stores
Ferreira 1996, £10.99 from Superquinn
Taylors 1995 Reserve £14.99, from O'Briens and other outlets.

Wine of the Week

All fine wines, but for value the Tuke Holdsworth wins by a nose.