Thursday, May 28 2009

Off With His Neck

I wanted a haircut, not a shave!

No, it's nothing so gruesome as a head-ectomy. I was going through my pictures this morning and came across a sequence from Portugal. I was there last Spring, studying the wine and cork production. One of the funnest things I got to do while there was to participate in a Port decanting ceremony at the Vintage House in Pinhao, at the upper end of the Douro river.

Nice little place. Try the roast boar, and the hassenpfeffer is great.

For the very oldest and rarest Port wines the corks can't be trusted. After thirty or forty years they become brittle and crumbly, and even the most adroit Sommellier will have trouble extracting the closure without scattering cork crumbs in the bottle. When these old masters are opened they use a weirdly wonderful technique: they cut the top of the bottle off. However, instead of a guillotine or a sword, they use a set of Port tongs

We have ways of making you 'open up'.

My gracious hosts knew I had been previously employed as a Sommellier, and I may even have bragged about chopping the top off of Champagne bottles, so I was pressed into service. Gulp! First step was to gird my loins against flying glass and molten debris.

It wasn't my colour, but at least it fit. Note tongs resting in flame on right.

Thus protected from any hazard by a thin layer of cotton, we proceeded. My guide, Octávio assured me that he had never lost anyone teaching them to open Port. When asked how many peopel he had taught, he beamed and told me it was his pleasure to have me as his first. Hmm!

First step is to heat the tongs, to a dull red: not too hot or it may prematurely crack the neck and you could lose the contents. Then the tongs are very carefully applied exactly halfway down the length of the cork inside the neck.

Note left hand: I'm always on the clock!

I was instructed to keep the tongs on for thirty seconds only: any longer could break the bottle or even transfer enough heat to scorch the cork, or worse boil off any wine soaking it.

After that the tongs came off and I used a little jug to trickle iced water over the hot section of the neck.

If I water it, will it grow?

It only took a few drops and the bottle gave a wee 'crack!' and the neck snapped off cleanly around the cork. Meanwhile the cork stayed anchored at both ends: the bottle was actually still sealed, but with a bare midriff of cork exposed!

Now Octavio and I synchronise watches! Mickey says, 'Time to drink!'

With the patient coaching of Octavio and a beautiful linen napkin, I gently buffed the neck of the bottle coaxed the cork up and out. It came out perfectly!

Well I'll be a monkey's uncle: it actually worked!

After the successful extraction, the bottle still had to be decanted. It was a bottle of Warre's Vintage1991, so probably not old enough to have large volumes of crust, but it definitely had sediment in it. With the use of a candle, and Octavio's peristent hovering (I know exactly how he felt: if it worked, I got the glory. If I screwed it up, he had to go get another bottle and still smile at me. Poor dude!) I got it off the sediment, and no glass chips either.

Better to light a single candle than curse the darkness . . .

Octavio pours the last of the bottle off to check my work. Yep, there's the sediment.

After that it was all over bar the eatin'. The wild boar was pretty great, but I won't soon forget the wild hare, or the delicious wines that went along with everything. Good thing we didn't have to go anywhere for hours!

What, you don't need a seperate table for your drinks when you go out for dinner?

Now I know two ways to get into a bottle through the side door. I wonder if there are any more I should know about . . .

Posted by Tim AT 8:55PM

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