How to Make Port Wine Sauce
This sauce is made exactly the same way as you prepare the Marsala Sauce but you substitute Port Wine for Marsala. Like Marsala, port is a fortified wine but its home is the Douro Valley of Portugal.
Its rich and sweet flavor can add a wonderful dimension to many foods. Use a ruby port for optimum fruitiness and sweetness. Use a Tawny port for greater complexity.
Best Served With:
- Roasted Lamb
- Grilled meats such as veal or beef medallions
- Chicken breasts
Duck - Foie gras
Ingredients
The ingredients in this sauce recipe are easy to find in most grocery stores except the demi glace. After the recipe you'll see some commercial brands available at Amazon that a great for making restaurant quality sauces.
If you don't have Port wine in the house for cooking or consuming as an after dinner drink, you can substitute more of the red wine you are using. And if you must, you can substitute dried thyme but fresh is better.
📖 Recipe
Port Wine Sauce Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 oz. butter ¼ stick
- ¼ cup shallots finely chopped
- ¾ cup Port wine
- ¼ cup red wine
- 1 cup Demi Glace
- salt and pepper to taste
- 1 bay leaf
- 1 sprig fresh thyme ¼ tsp. dried
- ¼ cup heavy cream optional
Instructions
- Melt the butter in a saucepan and sauté the shallots briefly until translucent (approximately 3 minutes).
- Deglaze with the Port and red wines and reduce until most of the wine has cooked off, (approximately 5 – 6 minutes)
- Add the demi glace, salt, pepper, bay leaf, and thyme and simmer for approximately 5-6 minutes (or until the sauce has thickened).
- Strain the sauce, add the heavy cream (if desired), and return to a simmer for a few minutes and serve.
- The optional heavy cream gives the sauce a richer color and additional flavor.
My Top Choices for Demi Glace
Online Sources: Demi Glace
For those of you who do not want to make demi glace at home.
Demi glace is the most important ingredient for making classic "restaurant quality" brown sauces. All the great French brown sauces use demi glace. But it can also be used in soups, stews and braises. It's something you can make at home but it takes a long, long time to do it right and if you make one mistake, it can easily be ruined. Lucky for us, there are now some great sources for commercial grade demi glace and I want to share a few with you now. Everyone has their preferences so I suggest you give each a try to find out which product you like best.Savory Choice's Demi Glace
Ready in minutes, Savory Choice beef demi glace allows home chefs to deliver impressive restaurant-quality meals quickly and cost-effectively. Professional chefs typically take at least 24 hours to prepare this traditional reduction sauce by simmering stock, vegetables, wine and spices to a velvety consistency.More Than Gourmet's Demi Glace Gold
One of my first commercial demi glace products and still one of my favorites. For almost 25 years, More Than Gourmet has been the gold standard for flavor and quality when it comes to sauces, stock, and soup. This product comes in 1 pound tubs and 1.5 ounce pucks and even bigger sizes if you are a commercial establishment. I like buying 6 of the pucks at a time unless I'm doing a big party and need the pounder.
Tushar
Hi,
Am planning to make this BBQ sauce for my next outing, though I am concerned if receipe will work without the Demi Glace. Two reasons, Demi Glace Not something I would get in Bombay India, and secondly the receipe to make it is quite a difficult one 🙂
G. Stephen Jones
HI Tushar, I'm not sure I would call the Pork Wine Sauce a BBQ sauce but that's ok. You could try making it with reduced beef stock with a little tomato paste added in. It will work, but not as good as with demi glace. Let me know how it works out for you.