Critic's picks: Winter's finest fortifieds

I can't imagine living in the tropics, where there's no real summer or winter and seasonal weather changes are minimal.

I enjoy the winter chill, which gives us the opportunity to rug up, to sit in front of an open fire, ski, listen to the drumming of rain on the roof etc. It also brings different foods to celebrate and enjoy at only that time of year: chestnuts, quinces, rhubarb, brussels sprouts. It's a time to break open different kinds of wines that we might never feel like drinking in warmer weather. Hearty reds, yes, but also fortified wines in their many hues and styles.

I love a glass of chilled champagne as an aperitif almost any day, but sherry before dinner is a habit that deserves to be revived. A chilled glass of fino is a year-round pleasure, but a more complex amontillado or a rich and hearty oloroso is a soul-warming drink: a symbol of winter as potent as a red-breasted robin on a frosty fence post.

Fortified wines

The definition: a fortified wine is a wine that has had distilled grape spirit added to it, boosting its alcoholic strength to between 18 per cent and 20 per cent. This was originally done to ''fortify'' a table wine for an arduous sea voyage, to protect it against the hyper-oxygenation that could occur as it sloshed about in a barrel. Sherry from southern Spain, port from Portugal and madeira from the island of Madeira were examples. Fortification is a great preserver: vintage port and madeira are among the longest-living wines of all and ageing brings fabulous complexity of flavour.

Sherry (apera)

These can vary from pale-coloured, bone-dry, aperitif wines such as fino and manzanilla to medium-dry amontillado and palo cortado to sweet oloroso and very sweet moscatel and pedro ximenez. Apera is the new Australian term for sherry. Fino and manzanilla are peerless aperitifs: good winter-time alternatives to pre-dinner sparkling wine, lip-smackingly dry and marvellously appetite-stimulating. Dry amontillado is great with tapas; sweeter amontillado and oloroso are great with clear soups, especially consomme.

Try these:

● Pale and dry: Delgado Zuleta La Goya Manzanilla ($16.50 a half), 919 Wines Pale Dry Apera ($28), Chambers Dry Flor Apera ($17), Sanchez Romate Amontillado NPU ($40).

● Medium-sweet: Seppeltsfield DP116 Aged Flor ($32/500ml), Morris Old Premium Amontillado ($45/500ml).

● Very sweet: Sanchez Romate Cardenal Cisneros PX ($57), Seppeltsfield DP38 Rare Rich Oloroso ($32/500ml).

Port etc.

Port originated in Portugal, where the best of this much-copied style is still produced. It can be single-vintage, which is aged in the bottle and demands patience, or wood-aged (tawny or ruby) port, which is usually a non-vintage wine, blended to a consistent style from bottling to bottling. If in doubt about telling the difference, a vintage port usually comes in a claret-shaped bottle with a long cork, whereas a tawny is usually in a stumpy bottle with a short cork stopper or screw cap. Tawny port is ready to drink when sold; vintage is sold young, relies on the buyer to cellar it, and can be at its drinking peak anywhere from 15-30 years from vintage. It's great with aged, hard cheeses such as cheddar, and blues including stilton, gorgonzola and roquefort. As with sherry and tokay, ''port'' is a protected name and Australia can't use it. Wineries employ a variety of solutions to this problem, such as VP or vintage fortified for vintage port styles; and fine tawny or rare tawny for wood-aged tawny ports.

Try these:

● Tawny - Australian: Yaldara 20 ($50), 30 and 40 Year Old, Grant Burge 10 Year Old ($30), Penfolds Bluestone 10 Year Old ($24), Seppelt DP90 Rare ($69), Saltram Mr Pickwick's, Penfolds Grandfather and Great Grandfather.

●Tawny - Portuguese: Graham's Fine ($37), Ramos Pinto Adriano Reserva 8 Years Old ($37), Ramos Pinto Quinta do Bom Retiro 20 Years Old ($128).

● Vintage - Australian: Stanton & Killeen VP, Pfeiffer Christopher's VP, Peter Lehmann AD Vintage Fortified.

● Vintage - Portuguese: Taylor Fladgate, Fonseca, Graham's, Dow's, Quinta do Noval, Warre's, Ramos Pinto.

Muscat, tokay, madeira

We could bracket these wines loosely as sweet dessert wines. Made from super-ripe, late-harvested grapes, only partly fermented, then aged for long periods in old oak barrels of various sizes, these are the liqueur-like after-dinner sippers, sweet to the point of being luscious. Like old tawny ports, they can be tremendously complex in bouquet and flavour. North-east Victoria, especially Rutherglen, is Australia's pre-eminent region for these. As ''apera'' has replaced ''sherry'', so the word ''tokay'' has been replaced by ''topaque''. Rutherglen muscat is made from the red frontignac grape, known locally as brown muscat; topaque is made from muscadelle.

Madeira, from the Portuguese island of the same name, is another thing altogether. The wine is heated before being wood-aged. It comes in a multiplicity of styles ranging from very dry (sercial) to very sweet (malmsey). Several grape varieties can be used. The few Australian examples that still remain (the name is to be banned here) tend to be sweet.

We have many other wonderful sweet fortified wines from other regions, such as Sandalford's Sandalera from the Swan Valley, Bleasdale's Fortis et Astutus from Langhorne Creek, De Bortoli's the Black Noble (Riverina), Joseph the Fronti (Adelaide Plains), Dandelion Vineyards' PX and Turkey Flat PX (both Barossa). And don't forget marsala: Vito Curatolo Arini, dry, sweet and especially the vintage Riserva Storica.

Luscious fortifieds are great with chocolates, caramels, fudge, Florentines, hazelnut toffee, and many other kinds of confectionery.

Try these:

● Muscat: McWilliam's Hanwood ($13), Buller Fine Old ($20), All Saints Rutherglen ($22 a half), Morris Old Premium ($65/500ml), Chambers, Campbells, Stanton & Killeen, Baileys, Pfeiffer.

● Topaque: Buller Fine Old ($20), Morris Old Premium ($65/500ml), Chambers, Campbells, Stanton & Killeen, All Saints, Baileys.