Thanks all..
At this point, I believe that it is customary to give details, so here goes..
This was my first attempt at port. I do not really drink a whole lot of port, but I have come to like it right after shoveling snow in the winter. I make it most every year in the fall, along with all the other wines I make that year. I make it in only small batches, usually limited to a single 5 gal carboy.
The idea of making port was suggested by a former friend of mine (don't ask) and was a bit of a collaborative effort. I was toying with the idea of making port for some time when my grape supplier (Corrado's) had a very rare and limited supply of Tinta Cao grapes. Being that the grapes were Portuguese in origin, I figured what better to use for port.
Having never made port before, I found this fantastic web site (guess which one) that was a wealth of information, especially the suggested use of the Pearson's square.
My base approach was to try to make as much use of the natural sugars of the grape. To me (and it might just be my imagination) natural "front" sugars taste better then back-sweetening.
I Kicked off fermentation in the usual way with Lalvin RC-212 (my yeast of choice for all of my reds) and waited until I had 8% residual sugar (down from 26%) remaining and added my fortifier to stop the fermentation prior to pressing (wine was still on the skins). Total fermentation time was 5 days
As a fortifier, I used (E&J Brandy). This was perhaps the cheapest brandy that I could find that was also very drinkable. I like to use brandy because (IMHO) I feel it really does bring a lot of flavor to the party.
I used the weight of the grapes to determine the expected volume of wine and added fortifier to arrive at 22% ABV. This amounted to (roughly) 2 gallons of brandy to 3 gallons of wine.
After adding the fortifier, I felt that the port should have a much deeper color, so we left the port on the skins for an additional 2 days and pressed it. At this point, the color deepened somewhat.
After about 2 weeks, we racked the port into a medium toast barrel. When we tasted it, we felt that the port was not sweet enough, so at least some back sweetening was in order.
Then came the question.. What to use? I did not like the idea of refined sugars (again, going with the natural sugar theme) so we decided on using maple syrup (shhh, this is supposed to be a secret). My thinking was that the maple flavor (wood) would work well. We ended up adding about a cup or so until it tasted right.
The port was aged in the barrel for the better part of a year and racked 3 times. The amount of time spent in the barrel surprised me, but frequent tastings showed that the port was simply getting better and better. After a year, we bottled in the usual way.
but I'll be waiting for you on the 
of the mountain will you come out and play?
