Not just for Christmas

Everything looks better after a glass of port but why do we only seem to reach for this life-enhancing fortified wine during the festive season

- By Jonathan Ray

PORT IS for life, not just for Christmas. Thus spake the tea towel I spotted in a tourist shop in Porto the other week. I pondered these wise Zarathustran words as I sipped on an ice-cold porto tônico in the pale but warm autumn sun and, as so often with such printed slogans, applauded the words' pith and wit. I just wish Mrs Ray hadn't been wearing her 'I'm with Stupid' T-shirt.

The tea towel was bang on though, for many of us only think of port – the gorgeous, life-enhancing fortified wine of the Douro Valley – at this time of year, relying on it to get us through the horrors of the festive season. Unlike, say, the wet cardboard that goes by the name of roast turkey or that slop called Christmas pudding, which is so unpalatable we smother it in brandy and set fire to it, we really ought to consider the joy that is port more often. Just as we should eat Brussels sprouts more regularly.