Churchill’s Finest

Port need not be decanted and savoured at the end of a post-hunt dinner in winter. A chilled glass of white port makes a fine late morning aperitif, especially in hot weather, and there is none better than Churchill’s.

Appropriately I had my first taste of this amber elixir, redolent perhaps of a new duchess’s sun-kissed thigh, on holiday in Portugal. Robert and I went for a tour of one of the big port houses. It was rather a steep, hot climb up the other side of the Douro from our hotel and on arrival we did not find the rather charming premises I had hoped for. It resembled an airport terminal with shops, electronic gates and crowds of visitors. We couldn’t face it and trudged back down the hill. Towards the bottom an amateurish banner was pinned up advertising Churchill’s Port along a side street. We were the only visitors and so had a guide to ourselves; a student who spoke English.

At the beginning of the tour he asked if we knew how the house got its name. As it happened, rather precociously, I did and said so. “Mr Graham called his company after his wife’s maiden name.” We were standing facing stainless steel vats of port in the making. Our guide asked if I knew Johnny Graham. Fortunately I said that I knew of him but we had never met. “Well, if you’d like to meet him, turn around.” He was walking down a staircase from his office with some business visitors. I explained that we had a mutual friend (Mungo) and so at the end of the tour we went up to his board room where he poured us glasses of his chilled white port. There can be no finer introduction to such a neglected tipple. I drink it neat but Susy Atkins, writing in The Telegraph last year, has another idea.

White port is one of the great summer sundowners, simpler than fino sherry but just as refreshing. Not neat white port, you understand, but served just as they do in Portugal’s Douro Valley: a good slug in a tumbler, topped up with cold tonic with plenty of ice, bruised mint sprigs and a lemon slice.

I start wanting white port and tonic as early as May-time (it doesn’t suit winter, at all), and especially love it when sitting outside on warm, light evenings.

Chacun son goût or cada um ao seu gosto but it sounds like a girls’ drink to me.