This article is taken from the October 2024 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

When he joined Penfolds to promote its fortified wines, John Rogerson was described, good naturedly I think, as a “traitor” by someone in the port industry. Rogerson was born and raised in Porto, speaks English with a slight Portuguese accent and has, as he puts it, “lived and breathed port my whole life”.

So why move then? Well, it’s not very well known in Britain, but Australia has a fortified wine heritage which is almost as rich and long as Portugal’s. For much of the 19th and 20th century, the country’s vineyards churned out Empire “ports” and “sherries” for the British market. One Barossa valley producer, Yalumba, was known as the “Oporto of Australia”. Housed in what looks like a huge castle, it had its own distillery and cooperage.

Penfolds was founded in 1844 by Christopher Rawson Penfold, a doctor from Sussex, to provide so-called tonic wines for his patients. The company grew rapidly so that by 1901, it was producing an estimated third of Australia’s wine with brands such as Penfolds Royal Reserve Port.

All those old shiraz vines which produce grapes for cult wines such as Penfolds Grange (yours for around £500 a bottle) were originally planted to make port-style wines that are now known as tawnies because of a trade agreement with the EU.

Port might not be the ideal thing to sip in the heat of South Australia; its production process, however, suits the climate. Before temperature-controlled vats became the norm in the 1960s, there was a danger that the fermenting grapes might get too hot resulting in a wine that tasted stewed — or worse still, the fermentation might stop altogether leaving the wine susceptible to bacterial infection.

In the port process the winemaker adds brandy, which kills the yeasts and stops the fermentation before anything can go wrong, leaving a stable wine with plenty of fresh fruit flavour.

Or that’s the theory anyway. These Empire ports didn’t always hit the spot back in England. In Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant, the fifth part of A Dance to the Music of Time, Anthony Powell gives us a memorable encounter with an Australian “Tawny Wine (Port Flavour) which even Moreland had been unwilling to drink … Following a preliminary tasting we poured the residue of the bottle down the lavatory”. Or more recently think of Monty Python’s Chateau Chunder: “A fine wine, which really opens up the sluices at both ends.”

As table wines took off in Australia after the Second World War, followed by an export boom to Britain in the 1980s, Australian fortified wines waned. You can still buy Yalumba’s fine tawnies, but they are blended from maturing stock; no new fortified wines are being laid down.

Happily De Bortoli and d’Arenberg also make some fine examples which are quite easy to find. Penfold’s is going in the other direction to Yalumba with a tawny push — hence why they have taken on Rogerson.

The company makes a range of fortified wines from 10-year-old The Father Grand Tawny for about £25 to the quite extraordinary £1,500 50-year old Rare Tawny, which contains wines dating back to the early 20th century.

Despite originally being sold as port substitutes, the Portuguese comparison isn’t terribly helpful. For a start, the grapes are different: mainly grenache, shiraz and cabernet sauvignon with a smattering of Portuguese varieties.

Whereas for vintage port, winemakers are looking for power and tannin, James Godfrey, the man who has looked after Penfolds fortified range since 1990, is after fruit and softness. Following a short ferment so that around a third of sugar is turned into alcohol, he adds grape brandy to stop the fermenting process.

Port was traditionally aged in the cool of Vila Nova de Gaia opposite the city of Porto, but there was nowhere as temperate in the Barossa Valley. The temperature in the metal warehouses where the barrels are kept can reach 55 degrees centigrade in the summer.

The evaporation rate is huge, so the 300 litre casks are periodically topped up with younger wines to keep them fresh. For the 20-year-old Grandfather, the wines are aged for around 15 years before they go into a sherry-style solera system. The current release contains vintages from 1960 to 2004.

The result is a wine that’s fermented like a port, aged like madeira and blended like sherry. When trying a wine like the Grandfather, it’s helpful to put the port comparison out of your mind. It smells a bit like an old cognac with flavours of dried apricot, almonds and a little vinegar.

The palate is intensely sweet but balanced by a tangy acidity with notes of peach, orange peel and walnuts. At £60 a bottle, it’s the pick of the bunch for me, though if anyone offers you a glass of anything from the Penfolds tawny range, don’t turn it down.

After years of neglect, it’s great to see a company like Penfolds, which is part of the vast Treasury Wines Estates empire, shining a light on these forgotten treasures. According to Rogerson, once again the Australian market is beginning to appreciate tawnies, and British sales are growing.

With autumnal weather setting in, I can think of no better way of spending the evening than lighting a fire and savouring a little Penfolds Grandfather with a nice piece of mature cheddar or, even better, a cigar.