Cocktails with Ruby port
Ruby port is the youngest, most common style of Port — a sweet red fortified wine from Portugal’s Douro Valley.
ABV19–22%
Substitutes for Ruby port
Any other ruby-style port works one for one. A reserve ruby or a Late Bottled Vintage (LBV) is as sweet and as strong, with deeper fruit. Basic rubies have 96–106 g of sugar per liter at 19–20%, and LBVs about 90–110 g, so the drink barely changes. With no port at all, a sweet red vermouth comes nearest: 15–16.5% and 130–170 g. The drink turns a little weaker, sweeter and more herbal.
Aged in casks with more contact with air, so it turns amber and smells of dried fruit and wood rather than fresh red fruit. It is about as sweet: 95–114 g of sugar per liter for basic and reserve tawnies. One for one, the drink keeps its sweetness and strength but turns brown and loses its berry note.
On the label
- ruby
- Bottled ready to drink, with no cask age behind it, so it arrives at its darkest and its most purely fruity. The opposite of tawny in every respect but the grape.
- LBV
- Late Bottled Vintage: a ruby from a single year, bottled after four to six years in wood. More concentrated than a standard ruby, and far cheaper than vintage port.
