Food & drink pairing

Walnut tart and honey with Graham’s Single Harvest Tawny Port 1997

On the platter is a tart with a shortbread base, filled with roasted walnuts in a filling of honey and dark muscovado sugar that has only just set. Set against it is the port, a colheita from 1997, which after more than twenty years in cask smells of nuts and wood.

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Walnut tart and honey — Photo: avlxyz, CC BY-SA 2.0

From the shelf

The bottle

Graham’s is a port house from the Douro, founded in 1820. A single harvest tawny is what the Instituto dos Vinhos do Douro e do Porto calls a colheita: a tawny from the grapes of a single harvest, aged at least seven years in cask and slowly seeing its colour and flavour shift towards dried fruit, wood and spice. This bottle comes from the 1997 harvest and spent well over twenty years in cask before it was bottled. It is 20 percent ABV and comes in 75 centilitres. For tawny the institute uses a serving temperature of 10 to 14 degrees.

Graham’s Single Harvest Tawny Port 1997

The combination

Why this works together

This combination is one of equal notes, and it works here because the glass has the depth the tart needs. Walnuts roasted for five minutes lose the green bitterness of their skin and keep a warm, almost woody nuttiness; a colheita that has lain for well over twenty years in oak casks smells of exactly that: walnut, wood and dried fruit. Add the honey, which caramelises in the filling and together with the muscovado sugar gives a dark, molasses-like layer that connects with the spice note an old colheita brings. The counterweight has to come from the glass: a tart with 340 grams of honey and 200 grams of muscovado is very sweet, and only a port with plenty of residual sugar and enough acidity stands up to that. Finally, the egg yolk in the filling and the fat of the nuts soften the 20 percent alcohol.

At the table

The dish

For 4 people
Ready in 2 hours and 30 minutes, plus cooling
Type dessert

What you need

200 g flour for the dough
100 g unsalted butter
75 g fine granulated sugar
2 large egg yolks, beaten
3 large eggs and 3 egg yolks for the filling
200 g light muscovado sugar
340 g clear honey
2 tablespoons whipping cream
1 tablespoon flour
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
200 g walnuts, roasted for 5 minutes and then chopped
a 23 cm tart tin with a fluted edge

How to make it

Blitz the flour and the butter in the food processor until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs and mix in the granulated sugar. Pulse in the egg yolks until the dough clumps. Wrap it in cling film, press it into a disc and leave it to rest in the fridge for 30 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees, or 180 degrees fan, with a baking tray inside. Roll out the dough to the thickness of a coin, line the tin with it, trim the edge and let it chill for another 15 minutes.
Prick the base, line it with baking paper and ceramic baking beans and blind-bake it for 20 minutes. Remove the paper and beans and bake the base for another 5 minutes until golden brown.
For the filling, whisk together the eggs, the egg yolks, the muscovado sugar, the honey, the whipping cream, the tablespoon of flour and the vanilla extract.
Spread the chopped walnuts over the base and pour the filling over them.
Bake the tart for 45 to 50 minutes, until the filling has just set and still moves slightly in the middle.
Let the cake cool in the tin and serve it at room temperature or slightly warm, with a little whipped cream.

In the glass

Serving

Serve this colheita at 10 to 14 degrees. Use a roomy glass: the institute advises a large glass for very old port, in which the aroma can develop. Do not fill it beyond a third. Decanting is not necessary, because the wine has spent its years in cask and was fined at bottling. According to the institute, an opened bottle of colheita stays good for one to four months; store it upright in a cool place.

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