From the deepest recesses of your parents’ drinks cabinet they come, the drinks that only see the light at Christmas. A parade of dusty, duty-free misfits, lining up to be sipped once and then packed away with the boxes of sticky dates for another year: Midori, Blue Curaçao, Advocaat. That pink stuff with the baffling Cyrillic-script label.
I have plenty of friends who would include various fortified wines among this selection of kitsch. Sherry, port, marsala and madeira may not be so eccentrically lurid in flavour and appearance, but they are once-a-year propositions for most people. A shame, since these are some of the finest and best value drinks in the world.
Still, if you are only going to buy one fortified wine a year, best make it a good one – and drink it by Twelfth Night. With the exception of madeira, whose unique production process means it will keep pretty much for ever, fortified wines won’t last for more than a few weeks. Stick them in a drinks cupboard and, like any other wine, they’ll become more like vinegar.
I find port is at its best a day or two after opening, when it has had time to breathe, ideally in a decanter. Among my favourites are the suavely nutty Sandeman 20 Year Old Tawny Port (£29.99, Waitrose), Taylor’s perfumed Quinta de Vargellas Vintage Port 2002 (£30, Majestic; Waitrose), and the plush Berry Bros & Rudd LBV by Quinta do Noval 2011 (£16.95; bbr.com).
On a tighter budget, Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Special Reserve Port NV and Tesco Finest Late Bottled Vintage Port 2011 (both £10) both have a level of sweet, dark kirsch and chocolate that you just don’t find in unfortified red wines at the same price.
Port’s place alongside the stilton may be unassailable, but sherry is more versatile, offering the aperitif (the zippy, salty green olives of Valdespino Inocente Fino NV; £13.95, Lea & Sandeman) to the lingering post-meal sipper (the umami depths of Emilio Hidalgo El Tresillo Armontillado Fino; £33, Bottle Apostle; VinCognito).
For enjoying with, or in lieu of the Christmas pudding, Bodegas Toro Albalá Don PX Gran Reserva 1996 (from £17, The Wine Society; Oddbins) from east of Jerez in Montilla, is a molasses-like marvel, while the vibrant Barbeito 10 Year Old Malvasia Madeira (from £32.95 Berry Bros and Rudd; Handford) is superb with mature hard cheeses. But perhaps the most Christmassy fortified concoction I’ve tasted this year is Domaine Jean Bourdy Galant des Abbesses (£39.95, Wine Sensations). A mix of grape juice and Asian spices from the Jura in eastern France, it’s been boiled, blended with grape spirit and aged in barrels for a taste not unlike liquefied lebkuchen.
If fortified wines are at their best in a fireside setting, other drinks are just as capable of inducing the ruminative postprandial calm that is, for me at least, the purpose of Christmas. It can be prompted by a dark beer, such as the smoky Meantime London Porter (£2.29, 50cl, Marks & Spencer), or whisky, such as the smoke and sea of Islay’s Laphroaig 10 Year Old (£26.50, Asda); the honeyed graciousness of Speyside’s Glenrothes Select Reserve (£36.45, Whisky Exchange); or the easy-drinking fruitiness of Akashi Japanese Blended Whisky (from £32, 50cl Waitrose; M&S; Oddbins).
But there will be times over the next couple of weeks that call for a pick-me-up. A gin and tonic made from Jensen’s elegant Bermondsey Dry Gin (£25.95, Whisky Exchange), say. Or a lighter long drink that uses vermouth as a base. Italy’s Riserva Carlo Alberto Vermut Sec (£18.99, Drink Shop) comes in a bottle that would be very much at home at the back of a vintage drinks cupboard. But its bittersweet Mediterranean herbiness works just as well over ice at a cafe table in Rome in high summer as it does before dinner on Christmas Day.
Six great Christmas drinks
Marco de Bartoli Vigna la Miccia Marsala Superiore Oro DOC 5 Anni, Sicily, Italy (£23.90 tannico.co.uk)
Marco de Bartoli, the late master of Sicily’s great fortified wine style, may have passed the baton to his children, but the quality of the estate’s marsalas remains second to none. There’s elegance in its mix of dried and fresh fruit with hazelnuts and hints of toffee, and it has a sweet, fresh raciness that makes it so good with blue cheese.
Casa Mariol Vermut Blanco, Catalonia, Spain (£20, Bottle Apostle)
Gorgeously light, fragrant, herbal vermouth from Catalonia, a blend of dry white wine made from macabeo grapes with herbs, nuts and spices steeped in neutral grape spirit. Serve straight up with an olive, a slice of citrus or with a splash of salty, fizzy mineral water as a lighter, Christmas morning alternative to G&T.
Maynards 10 Year Old Tawny Port, Portugual (£9.99, Aldi)
The Maynards range of ports are a real strength of the Aldi range, not least this classy blend of wines that have spent an average 10 years mellowing in barrel. A glorious mix of baking spice, sweet figs and dried fruit, and a genuine bargain when most tawny ports of this age and quality cost twice the price.
Siren Barrel-Aged Caribbean Chocolate Cake Stout (£6, 330ml, 8.5%, Oddbins)
From Berkshire’s Siren, one of the best of Britain’s ever-expanding craft brewing scene, this is a superbly rich, complex and winter-warming brew that evolves in the glass, offering dried citrus peel and lemon zestiness as well as the titular darker flavours of cocoa and roasted coffee bean.
Diplomatico Rum Reserva Exclusiva (£40, Waitrose)
Dark rum provides the bass notes and punch in many of my favourite cocktails, but this superb example from Venezuela is really one for fireside solo sipping. Aged for 12 years in oak barrels, it has the texture of velvet and flavours of molasses, vanilla, and spicy Christmas cake.
