Port Wine Cocktail

Ruby. It's young, unoxidized and loud with dark berry fruit, which is what the curaçao is there to lift. Tawny brings nut and caramel that muddle against orange peel, and opening a vintage bottle for a drink served over ice wastes a good decant.

Longer than wine, shorter than spirits. Ruby port sits near 20 percent alcohol, so a stoppered bottle in the fridge stays bright for four to six weeks. After that the fruit dulls and goes raisiny, and this drink has nothing to hide that behind.

You notice it as aroma rather than as sweetness. A bar spoon of orange liqueur floats on the port and reaches your nose before the wine reaches your tongue. Double it and you flatten the fruit, because the port is carrying plenty of sugar already.

By cocktail standards, comfortably. Once the ice has done its work you're drinking something around the strength of an ordinary glass of wine, with a Negroni sitting at roughly double that. It's the reason this works at six o'clock instead of eleven.

A classic Port Wine Cocktail calls for 90 ml (3 oz) Ruby port, 4 ml (0.25 oz) Triple sec / Cointreau. That single-serve spec scales cleanly — the recipe above converts it to oz and multiplies it for 2–4 drinks.

A Port Wine Cocktail is stirred, not shaken. It contains no citrus juice, so stirring keeps it crystal clear and silky instead of cloudy and aerated.

Serve a Port Wine Cocktail in a rocks glass (old fashioned glass), over fresh ice cubes.