There is a case to be made that the best thing to happen to Portuguese golf in the past hundred years was invented not on a course, but in a Port lodge in Vila Nova de Gaia. Known simply as a Chip Dry & Tonic, it is dry, refreshing, faintly herbal and modest enough in alcohol to remain sociable.

Pour one part Taylor’s Chip Dry White Port into a tall glass filled with ice. Add two parts chilled tonic water. Stir once, gently. Finish with a sprig of mint or a twist of lemon. That is the entire recipe, and it takes less than a minute.

Portugal has been playing golf for longer than most visitors realise. Oporto Golf Club in Espinho, twenty minutes south of Oporto, was founded in 1890 by British Port shippers who wanted somewhere to play. It is the oldest club in Portugal and the second-oldest in continental Europe. Its Skeffington Cup has been contested every year since 1891 without interruption, making it one of the oldest surviving tournaments in the game. The course is a true links: narrow, wind-harried and laid out along the Atlantic.

From 1916 to 1947, the club was presided over by Frank “Smiler” Yeatman, a member of the family that has run Taylor’s for generations. His name still appears on a trophy there - the Taça Yeatman, contested by the club’s juniors each Spring.

An important date was 1934. That was the year Porto Golf Club inaugurated Portugal’s first eighteen-hole course, with Frank Yeatman as chairman and Dick Yeatman as a member. It was also the year Taylor’s blended the first extra-dry white Port and called it Chip Dry. The club and the drink came of age together, under the same family.

Chip Dry was the work of Frank’s son Dick and his brother Stanley. At the time, Port was almost entirely an after-dinner wine, and the two men wanted something that could open a meal rather than close it. The trick was patience: allowing the wine to ferment for longer before adding grape spirit, so that far less sugar remained in the finished Port.

Made largely from Malvasia Fina, Gouveio and Viosinho grapes grown in the Douro Superior, and aged for four to five years in oak vats, Chip Dry is pale straw in colour, crisp and lightly nutty, with notes of citrus, fresh herbs and green apple.

Served chilled at 6–10°C alongside olives and salted almonds, it is an excellent aperitif in its own right. Lengthened with tonic over ice, it becomes something else entirely - a development the nineteenth hole has not failed to notice.

Which leaves the evening to be dealt with.

Taylor’s holds one of the most extensive reserves of cask-aged Port of any producer and is the leading name in aged Tawny - the 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 Year Olds that have become benchmarks for the style. From those reserves, the house each year releases a Tawny Port from a single year, exactly half a century after its harvest. This year, that Port was Taylor’s Single Harvest 1976, the tenth release in the series.

Credits: Supplied Image; Author: Fladgate;

1976 was a difficult year for growers. An exceptionally dry winter followed a succession of drought years - there had been no truly wet winter since 1972. Springs and wells that had never failed dried up for the first time in living memory, and some older vines did not survive. Rain finally arrived at the end of August. September was cool, with light showers and picking began on the 23rd. The resulting harvest was small and highly concentrated.

Fifty years in seasoned oak casks has turned the wine into a rich chestnut colour with a broad amber rim. The nose is elegant and beautifully perfumed, with wild honey, treacle, tea leaf and red cherry compote, alongside cedary cigar-box notes, wild rosemary and thyme, and a discreet touch of mint.

The palate is luscious but lifted by fresh acidity, offering blood-orange marmalade, dried figs, apricot and rum baba before closing bright, lean and harmonious. It requires no decanting, shows best at 12–16°C, and will retain its condition for around two months after opening.

So the day has a shape to it: a Chip Dry and tonic on the terrace when the round is over-cold, refreshing and reviving-followed by something considerably older once the sun has gone down and the scorecards have been properly argued over.

Frank Yeatman had thirty-one years in the chair at the Porto Golf Club to work this out. The rest of us can manage it in a single afternoon.