Kalsarikännit: The Finnish word for sitting at home in your underwear and getting drunk. It might sound like a strange concept but on a recent trip to lapland in northern Finland we got to understand why. The sun rose at 10am set at 4pm tricking your body into wanting to go to bed at 6pm so one solution was to go home and drink in your underwear although in our case our thermals due to the -23C temperatures. The locals drink beer and spirits but for us the obvious choice was a Port from the Douro in Northern Portugal. Made from a blend of local red grape varieties the fermentation is stopped early using high strength alcoholic grape spirit leaving some residual sugar resulting in a sweet high alcohol wine perfect for cold conditions.
In duty free we picked up a bottle of Late Bottled Vintage Port or LBV Port for short. Most Port is aged in barrels, usually with a Solera system, before it is bottled and then doesn’t age much in the bottle. Vintage ports, on the other hand spend much less time in barrel and intended to age in the bottle, often for decades. An LBV Port is made in the vintage port style but spends time in oak before it is bottled which results in a complex wine that has aging before it is bottled and is thus designed to be drunken earlier than vintage port.
We chose a Grahams 2012 LBV Port which was very reasonably priced compared to it’s Vintage Port relatives. It was dark and complex with concentrated dark fruits (blackberry, blackcurrant and black plum) and chocolate with a warm alcohol finish. Perfect for the long cold winter nights in northern Finland and Kalsarikännit.
