A Dinner Right Out of Portugal With Taylor Fladgate

When was the last time you enjoyed Port wine?

Maybe it’s something that’s few and far between. Maybe it’s been for a special occasion or celebration. Or maybe it’s been more casual than that. If you haven’t tried Port wine, one thing is for sure, it’s worth a glass or bottle.

To celebrate and bring more of this beautiful style of wine to the table, iYellow Wine Club teamed up with Taylor Fladgate to come up with a tailored food and wine pairing that brings Taylor Fladgate to the forefront with even the food using Port as an ingredient with every dish.

We had the pleasure of being joined by the talented sommelier of iYellow Wine Club, Angela Aiello, aptly named, @SuperWineGirl. She’s mentionable in this in two notable ways. She brought this all together and arranged a beautiful dinner. But, also, there were many people around the table who were interested in wine before but after meeting with Angela, they have become more knowledgeable and more passionate.

More on the port wine, Taylor Fladgate is a long-standing Port, with the brand being around since 1692. That’s right, well over 325 years. Astounding.

The Dinner By Chef Andrea Bolis X iYellow Wine Club

The dinner had us enjoying every plate. We had the exuberant and talented, Chef Andrea Bolis cook the table up some delicious dinner. It seemed like each of the ingredients used had their own stories, heritages and naturally aged processes. He mentioned that cooking with the Port wine as an ingredient for every dish was a bit of a challenge, but for us, he lived up to the challenge as each dish was more flavourful and savoury from the previous.

Here are some images from the gallery below:

Taylor Fladgate certainly brought out some complex and desirable port wines. We love that these ports are multi-vintages, with younger ports mixed with older ports from sometimes decades earlier. Port wines like the 10-, 20-, 30-year-old, 2013 Late Bottled Vintage, 2016 Porto Vintage, even the Historic Limited Edition Reserve Tawny Port were present and accounted for. Each with their own complexities, levels of smoothness and flavours. Each having to be paired with a different aspect of the meal proved to be that much more difficult.

The Bottom Line

Port wines are habits a bit of a renaissance, much like other more particular spirits. Bartender and home bartenders are getting more and more into culinary experiences and knowledge in Canada. Taylor Fladgate has been a staple for port wines in Portugal and the variety of wines gives you different levels of experience based on the variety of aged multi-vintage wines available in Canada. Taylor Fladgate also is releasing a packaged aged wine, the Taylor Fladgate Historic Limited Edition Reserve Tawny Port, for the holiday season.

Thank you to Angela and the iYellow Wine Club team for organizing a wonderful dinner, Taylor Fladgate for the delicious Ports and for Chef Andrea Bolis for the flavourful, port wine paired food, all together brought a great environment together. Visit each of their pages linked above to learn more about each of their passions, projects and what they are up to.

Read more LXRY:

• Experiencing A Full History Of Grand Marnier With Patrick Raguenaud
• Rediscovering The Importance of Food & Drink Around The Table With Osborne
• Grey Goose Brings The French Riviera To The Middle of Toronto