Tawny vs Ruby Port: Which Should You Buy?

Buy tawny if the bottle will sit open for weeks, and ruby if you are drinking it within a couple of weeks. That is the practical difference. Tawny spent years in cask taking on air, so air does nothing to it once opened. Ruby was kept away from oxygen and starts fading as soon as you pull the cork.

The difference is what the air did

Both start in the same place. Grapes from the steep terraces of the Douro Valley in northern Portugal, fermentation cut short with neutral grape spirit, which leaves the sugar in the wine and pushes it to around 20 percent alcohol. Like sherry, port is a wine that has been deliberately interrupted.

What separates the two styles is where the wine goes next. Ruby sits in large tanks that almost no air reaches, then gets bottled young. Tawny goes into small oak casks that let air seep in for years. The color drains out of it, red to russet to brown, and the blackberry slowly becomes caramel, walnut and dried apricot.

That history is what decides how the bottle behaves on your counter. A tawny has already taken on all the air it is ever going to, so a few weeks with the cork out changes very little. A ruby has not, and once opened it fades the way any open bottle fades, only slower, because the alcohol buys it time.

What each one costs

Style	How it ages	Tastes like	Roughly	Once open
Ruby	A few years in tank	Blackberry, plum, sweet and direct	15 dollars	Two weeks
Reserve ruby	Longer, from better lots	The same, with more depth	20 to 25	Two weeks
LBV	4 to 6 years in cask, one harvest	Firmer, less jammy	25 to 30	Two to three weeks
10-year tawny	Average 10 years in cask	Caramel, hazelnut, dried apricot	35	A month or two
20-year tawny	Average 20 years in cask	Denser, nuttier, tastes less sweet	65	A month or two
Vintage	Two years in cask, then decades in bottle	Concentrated and tannic, needs time	80 and up	Two days

Which one you should buy

• If you drink a glass at a time over several weeks, buy a 10-year tawny. It is the only bottle here that does not punish you for taking your time.
• If you are opening it for four people and finishing it that night, buy ruby or LBV. You are paying for fruit rather than for cask time, and you keep twenty dollars.
• If it is for someone else, tawny again, unless you know they keep a cellar and would enjoy sitting on a vintage for fifteen years.

The age on the label is an average

A 10-year tawny is not the 2016 harvest. The number is the average age the blend is built towards, so the house combines casks that are older and younger than the figure on the front. If you want a tawny from one specific year it has its own name, colheita, and the vintage is printed on the label. Ruby carries no age statement at all, which is the honest signal that age is not what you are buying.

Serve it cooler than you think

Tawny is better lightly chilled, somewhere around 12 to 14°C, which pulls the sweetness back and lets the nutty side through. Ruby wants cool room temperature, nearer 16°C. Neither one wants to sit next to a fire, whatever the Christmas ads suggest. After opening, both keep best in the fridge with the cork pushed back in, since serving temperature and storage temperature are two different jobs.

Port labels tell you less than almost any other shelf in the shop. AboutWine reads the bottle in front of you and explains how it will actually drink. Download it on the App Store.

Frequently asked questions

How long does port last after opening?

A tawny is good for a month or two, a ruby or LBV for two to three weeks, and a vintage port for about two days. Recork it and keep it in the fridge whichever one you have.

Is port always sweet?

Almost always, because the fermentation is stopped before the yeast finishes the sugar. The exception is dry white port, which is drunk cold as an aperitif and is often mixed with tonic in Portugal.

Do you need to decant port?

Not for tawny or LBV, which are filtered before bottling. Vintage port is unfiltered and throws a heavy sediment, so it does need decanting off the deposit.