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Pear tarte tatin with Ramos Pinto Quinta do Bom Retiro 20 Years Old

On the dish is an upside-down tart: pear halves in dark caramel, with a puff pastry base underneath that has turned golden brown in the oven. Opposite it the port sets a twenty-year-old tawny from a single quinta, whose nut and dried fruit pick up the caramel.

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From the shelf

The bottle

Ramos Pinto is a port house from 1880 and Quinta do Bom Retiro is one of its own vineyards in the Douro. This bottle is a tawny with an age statement of twenty years from that single quinta, made from Touriga Franca, Touriga Nacional, Tinta Roriz, Tinta Barroca and Tinto Cao, and aged twenty years in wood. It is bottled at 20 percent alcohol in 75 centilitres, with 122.3 grams of residual sugar per litre, an acidity of 4.26 grams per litre and a pH of 3.65. That puts it in the sweet class of the Instituto dos Vinhos do Douro e do Porto, between 90 and 130 grams. The house recommends 14 to 18 degrees and itself serves it with nuts, cheese, chocolate and desserts with dried fruit and nuts.

Ramos Pinto Quinta do Bom Retiro 20 Years Old

The combination

Why this works together

A tarte tatin revolves around a caramel that you make on the heat: sugar and water turn brown together, and the butter that goes in stops the cooking and binds the mixture. That caramel has a sweet core with a slight bitterness at the edge, and that is exactly the shape that twenty years in cask leave in a port: nut, toffee, dried fruit and a woody edge. Plate and glass therefore sit in the same corner, and the house itself recommends this bottle with desserts featuring nuts and dried fruit. The pear provides the counterweight: it is juicy and high in fruit acid, and with 4.26 grams of acid per litre the port itself is not overly fresh, so that acidity from the pear is welcome. With 122.3 grams of residual sugar, the glass is also sweeter than the tart, which keeps the port standing up next to it instead of turning thin.

At the table

The dish

  • For 4 people
  • Ready in 1 hour, plus 10 minutes resting
  • Type dessert

What you need

  • 4 Williams pears, halved, cored and cut into quarters
  • 150 g fine granulated sugar
  • 3 tablespoons water
  • 50 g salted butter, diced
  • 500 g puff pastry in a block
  • flour for dusting
  • 1 egg, beaten
  • ice cream to serve alongside

How to make it

  1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees, or 180 degrees fan. With a sharp knife, round off the sharp edges of the pear quarters.
  2. Put the sugar with 3 tablespoons of water in an ovenproof frying pan of 25 centimetres. Heat gently and swirl the pan while the sugar melts. Then turn the heat higher and let the caramel boil until it is the colour of a copper coin. Carefully add the butter; the mixture will spatter. Swirl until the butter is absorbed.
  3. Add the pear halves, turn the heat down and spoon the caramel over the fruit for 5 minutes, turning it occasionally, until golden brown. Take the pan off the heat.
  4. Arrange the pear wedges neatly in the pan with the flat side up, and keep in mind how the tart will look when you turn it out later.
  5. Roll out the puff pastry on a work surface dusted with flour into a circle about half a centimetre thick, slightly larger than the pan. Lay the dough over the pan and tuck the edges in on the inside so that it fits tightly. Prick six to nine small holes in the dough with a sharp knife and brush it with the beaten egg.
  6. Bake the tart for 25 minutes, until the pastry is golden brown.
  7. Take the tin out of the oven and let it rest for 10 minutes. Place a large dish on the tin and turn the tart out onto it in one swift movement. Cut it into wedges and serve with ice cream.

In the glass

Serving

Serve this twenty-year-old tawny at 10 to 14 degrees, or at the 14 to 18 degrees the house uses. Use a tulip-shaped glass and fill it no more than a third, so that the nutty aroma stays in the glass. Decanting is not necessary, because the wine was fined in cask. According to the institute, an opened bottle of tawny with an age statement keeps for one to four months; store it upright in a cool place.

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Wij verkopen geen alcohol aan personen onder de 18 jaar. NIX18