Talking about tannins. Not compelling, you say? Still, you want them in your wine glass (or tea cup), preferably supple, balanced and harmonious.
Port, sherry, tea and tannins
I watched the progress of Ernesto on television and on the National Weather Service website as it turned from a hurricane to a tropical storm to a tropical depression and headed up the coast from Florida toward the Hampton Classic showgrounds. No matter what they titled it, it was bringing us plenty of wind and rain, and we suffered through the weather on Saturday. But the skies joyfully cleared on Sunday for the Grand Prix.
During my weather watching, I sat in front of the television with a pot of aromatic, smoky lapsang souchong tea and a glass of aged tawny port. The port was 10 years old, the minimum for an aged tawny. The soft, gentle and sweet taste is less complex than a vintage port, but just right for certain moments. Because it is rounded and concentrated, you tend to sip slowly, and it was the perfect drink to linger over as Ernesto inched (at least on my screen) across the Mid-Atlantic states.
I know the more doctrinaire among us would not approve of drinking port in the afternoon or even at cocktail time. It is, after all, classically enjoyed as an after dinner drink. But sometimes, when I have an afternoon cup of tea, instead of nibbling on something sweet and curbing my appetite for dinner, I will have a nip of soothing sweet port. I had never really given much thought to wine and tea as a combination, and generally I would not pair the two. Without food to moderate the tastes, only port or sherry—if you want wine—seem to make sense with tea. Dry white wine is too cold and red wine, like tea, contains tannins.
Tannins—among about 500 chemical compounds in tealeaves—give tea an astringent quality that is essential to the overall taste. The tannins in red wine, which derive from the stems, skins and seeds, can be harsh and astringent when young. The winemaker’s goal is to have tannins that are supple and mature, balanced and harmonious. They are an absolute requirement for serious and important red wines, the ones that improve with age.
Tannins are quite different from acidity in a wine. One quick test is that tannins dry your mouth while acids cause your mouth to water and makes wines friendly to food. Port wine also contains tannins, but in a good port they seem to be so integrated that they are undetectable—just part of the complexity in your glass.
If there is food involved, as in an English afternoon tea, the sequence of taste changes. You are likely to have small sandwiches, scones and pastries between sips and you are less likely to be sipping tea and wine side by side. Without conflicting tannins, your palate recovers and your taste perceptions are more normal.
Sherry is sometimes offered as part of afternoon teas in tea shops and hotel dining rooms, both here and in England. Like port, sherry is a fortified wine, with alcohol added during the winemaking process. Authentic sherry comes only from the Jerez region of Spain and is blended and aged with wines of previous years in a complex method called Solera.
Fino and manzanilla are both very dry, amantillado less dry, and oloroso is sweet. An easy indicator is color: dry sherry is pale, while the sweeter sherries appear more and more amber. Cream sherry, a form of oloroso, is the sweetest.
I don’t think there is any natural affinity between sherry and tea. What they share is both being very British and both very nice to sip in the late afternoon, one or the other or both.
