At one time, port and dessert wines were the essential end to a truly fine meal. The indulgence was justified by the thought that savoring a digestif restored peace to the stomach after a sumptuous dinner. It was a pleasure with medicinal value. Lean back in your chair, stretch out your legs and swirl the liquid in your glass: Now the real conversation begins.

It's no wonder, then, that these wines occupy a diminished place among drinking fashions in contemporary times. Our lifestyles seldom encourage lingering at the table. In convenience stores, folks blast their bento lunches in the microwave and wolf them down at their desks. Fast-food patrons glug scalding, industrial coffee in their cars. There is little grace to it. We ingest calories, while the soul is deprived of nourishment.

Port and dessert wines have their own rhythm. They cannot be gulped. Nor is food essential with these wines. They are a coda to a meal, best accompanied by music and candles or firelight and talk. Because they are so rich and ripe in sweetness, they are better with walnuts or toasted almonds and a sliver of good, salty cheese (think Stilton, Roquefort, Forme d'Ambert, or a hard, aged cheese like Mimolette or pecorino) rather than a dessert. If you have a sweet tooth, however, you may favor a chunk of dark, faintly bitter chocolate with your port -- or a buttery fruit tart with your white dessert wine, such as Sauternes.

Dessert wines tend to be labor-intensive to produce; some also require extended cellar aging -- a costly process for wineries. But because they are not trendy, they are often great bargains. We have tracked down four excellent, distinctive wines for slow sipping, all priced between 2,000 yen and 3,000 yen. If you are mulling over how to spend a Valentine's evening with your sweetheart, check our recommendation below and watch for more in the next Vineland column on Feb. 10.

The 1998 Madrigale Primitivo di Manduria Dolce Naturale (2 yen,150-2,300) is one of the most intriguing dessert wines we've encountered lately. It comes from the Salento peninsula in Apulia -- the heel of Italy's boot -- where the landscape is a dry, sun-seared red plain, dotted with cacti and palm trees. The local grape varieties Negroamaro, Primitivo and Malvasia Nero are known for traditionally yielding rustic, hearty red wines in bulk quantities.

But the Madrigale red dessert wine is something quite special from this terrain. In recent years, viticultural research has revealed that Italy's Primitivo grape is the same as California's much-loved Zinfandel. Essentially, this dark, deeply fragrant and exotic red wine is Italy's own version of late-harvest Zin -- at an unbeatable price. It is naturally sweet (dolce naturale) from the grape's long hang time on the vine and can be produced only in good years.

This is lovely, seductive stuff, with aromas of raspberries, rose petals, vanilla and earth. It's thick and velvety, bursting with flavors of blueberries, plums, violets, cloves and candied orange peel. In Tokyo, it's available at Nissin supermarket in Higashi Azabu, (03) 3583-4586. Wine fans living elsewhere in Japan can order directly from Alcotrade, the importer (Tokyo office: [03] 5702-0620/fax [03] 5702-0621; Osaka office: [06] 6765 -7592/fax [06] 6765-0772; or e-mail: [email protected]).