Manchego and quince paste with Kopke 10 Years Old Tawny Port

Manchego is sheep's cheese, and sheep's cheese brings more fat and more salt than most cow's milk cheeses. The 2010 taste research by Green and colleagues identifies sweet as the strongest suppressor of salt in a taste mixture, and with roughly a hundred grams of residual sugar per litre a ten-year-old tawny has enough sweetness to flatten that salt. The quince paste sits between the two: it is itself concentrated sweet with a touch of acidity, and so forms the bridge to the dried fruit in the glass. The fat of the cheese stays on the tongue and is cleared by the alcohol and the acids of the port, which after ten years in small wood has stayed fresh enough. And because the wine has kept its aromas of nuts and caramel from the wood, a third layer comes in that the plate itself does not have.

Serve the tawny between 10 and 14 degrees, the band the Instituto dos Vinhos do Douro e do Porto recommends for this style; half an hour in the fridge is enough from room temperature. A small tulip-shaped glass, filled to a third, concentrates the nutty aromas. Decanting is not necessary, because a tawny with an age statement has become clear in cask before bottling. This is also the style that lasts longest: according to the same institute an opened tawny with an age statement keeps for one to four months, so you do not have to finish the bottle in one evening.