Tutored Wine Tasting

Tutored Wine Tasting PORT Speaker: Eric LAGRE Sommelier Port is the classic fortified wine from the Douro, the name of which derives from Oporto (Porto), the second largest city in Portugal, whence the wine has been shipped for over 300 years. Remains of stone troughs for the fermentation of foot-trodden grapes dating back to at least the 3 rd and 4 th centuries can be found throughout the Douro Valley, upstream from Oporto. But the denomination “Porto/Port”, however, only appeared during the second half of the 17 th century, coinciding with a boom in viticulture and wine export initiated by English merchants. Port has actually often been described as the archetypal wine of the British, and the reason for that is not difficult to discover: Port was created by the British for the British market. HISTORY The 1386 Treaty of Windsor was the first of a series of treaties to build strong and active links between Portuguese coastal cities and London. By the time of the reign of Henry VII, the English had established businesses and trade associations benefiting from certain diplomatic privileges in the ports of Lisbon, Oporto, and most importantly, as far as the wine trade was concerned, Viana do Castelo, in the Minho, right to the north of the county. Portuguese wines were often traded for woollen goods from England or dried, salted cod from Newfoundland, bacalhau thus becoming a staple of Portuguese cuisine. Since the thin and astringent Vinho Verde of the Minho was not a wine to the liking of the English consumer, English merchants would rely on Portugal only when needed, mostly because it was the easiest option in terms of shipment. The English always preferred French wines, but in times of war with the French, they often had to turn to the Portuguese and Spaniards for supply. In the late 17 th century for instance, fierce rivalry between the maritime empires in the North saw the Flemish and the English increase their demand for Iberian wines. In 1678, Charles II retaliated against Colbert’s protectionist measures, which had been preventing free trade between England and France for a decade, by prohibiting the importation of French goods altogether. William III would eventually relax the ban in 1693, though not without imposing punishing levels of taxation. These circumstances contributed to the consolidation of the commercial bond between England and Portugal. It was not long before British trade with France ceased once again with the outbreak of the War of the Spanish Succession, which lasted over a decade and blighted the end of the reign of Louis XIV, till his death in 1715, a year after the war ended. By the time of the conflict, a number of English shippers had sought wines better suited to the English palate further inland, up the Douro River. There, they found wines that were the opposite of those they had left behind on the coast: dark, acidic and astringent red wines produced through fast and furious fermentation at high temperatures, which quickly earned the name of “blackstrap” in London. Shipment was only possible down the Douro River, and therefore these pioneering merchants had to move their headquarters from Viana do Castelo down to Oporto. The earliest recorded shipment under the “Vinho do Porto” name, meaning “Port Wine”, took place in 1678. The commercial relationship between England and Portugal reached its pinnacle in 1703 when the Methuen Treaty was signed, which laid down further tariff advantages. A decade later, wine shipping companies, some of which were Dutch or German, but most of which were English, had re-established themselves in Oporto. The discovery of the winemaking technique that was to turn Port into the sweet and appealing drink we know today was credited to an Englishman, a Liverpool wine merchant who, in 1678, sent his two sons to Portugal in search of wine. At the monastery of Lamego, some 90 km up the Douro River from Oporto, they tasted a soft, slightly sweet red wine, which seemed to them much preferable to anything they had tasted so far. The abbot told them that the style was obtained by adding a small amount of brandy to the wine before it had had a chance to ferment fully to dryness. However, over half a century would pass before this modern style of Port wine became the standard. Indeed, as far as shippers were concerned, the first priority was to ensure that wine was stable enough to stand up to the rigours of shipment across the Bay of Biscay. In order to achieve this, brandy would be added to fully fermented wine just before loading it onto the cargo ship, and only in very limited amounts, thereby resulting in a dry fortified wine known as Shipping Wine. It was not until about 1720 that the modern winemaking technique, which consisted in adding grape spirit during fermentation to create a sweeter style, started becoming popular, gradually taking over. The rival merits of the two styles were earnestly discussed until well into the 19 th century, but eventually, the modern winemaking technique became widespread by the 1840s then universal from 1852. Had he not drowned in the Cachão de Valeira when his boat capsized on his way back from lunch at Quinta de Vargellas on Sunday 12 th May 1861, the famous Baron Joseph James Forrested of the Offley shipping company, one of the fiercest opponents to fortification and most influential figures in the Douro, might well have convinced his colleagues of the error of their ways and prevented Port from becoming the iconic fortified wine of today. Early in its history, in the 1730s, the fledging modern Port industry found itself blighted by scandal. Added sugar was used to bring sweetness and elderberry juice colour to poor, overstretched wines. Unprincipled production and adulteration brought about a slump in trade. Subsequent overproduction came hand in hand with a sharp fall in prices. Desirous of protecting their interests, the great Douro farmers petitioned the Portuguese Prime Minister of the day, the Marquis of Pombal, whose response was to introduce a series of lucrative measures to regulate Port production and trade. State control took the shape of the “Companhia Geral da Agricultura das Vinhas do Alto Douro”, established by Royal Chapter on 10 September 1756. The Company was granted the monopoly on Port trade with England and Brazil and full control over brandy production and trade in the north of Portugal. In 1757, a boundary was physically drawn around the Douro by “Marcos Pombalinos”, 335 stones bearing the Feitoria mark, thereby indicating that the so-called “fine wines”, the only wines allowed for export, and therefore the wines commanding the highest prices, had to be produced from grapes grown within the delimited area. A comprehensive Port vineyard classification had indeed been carried out, which made a distinction between the top vineyards responsible for these “fine wines” or “vinhos de feitoria" and the lesser vineyards responsible for the “vinhos de ramo”, which, in contrast, could not be sold but on the domestic market only. Every single elderberry tree within the official demarcated region and all the vineyards just outside of it were summarily grubbed up by the authorities. The monopoly company was in essence the official controlling body within the Douro region, and it had the duty to ensure quality, prevent fraud, and balance production and demand in order to guarantee price stability. In that sense, the region referred to as “the Douro” is often quoted as the first wine region ever demarcated. Professor Gaspar Martins Pereira, Portuguese historian and director of the Museu do Douro, writes in “Port Wine”, published in 2004 by the IVDP, that two regions were demarcated earlier: Chianti in Tuscany in 1716, and Tokay in Hungary in 1737. But many argue that “the Douro” was the first ever demarcated wine region to meet modern EU standards. Luís Lopes and João Paulo Martins, for instance, write in the 200 th issue of the Portuguese magazine “Revista de Vinhos”, in their article "200 dicas sobre vinhos" that "in 1716, the Chianti region in Italy was the first geographically demarcated wine area, but the 1756 demarcation of the Douro was the first with exact borders, its own legislations and controlling body." That original demarcated area was limited to the Alto Douro, which was surrounded by mountains on all sides. The Cachão de Valeira canyon was one of these natural barriers to the East. This huge granite outcrop prevented all navigation across it, and therefore, no goods could be transported relatively quickly and cheaply downstream from the region we now call the Douro Superior. From the 1780s, over two decades of demolition work eventually made this section of the river navigable in 1807. As a result, viticulture became economically viable in the Douro Superior, though the task of negotiating the fast- running rapids of the Valeira gorge remained so hazardous that hardly any vineyards were planted east of the canyon. Only the impact of Oidium and Mildew in the 1850s then Phylloxera a decade later will force the land to be reorganised in 1865. The eastern line of demarcation marked by the Cachão de Valeira canyon was lifted and vineyards expanded into the Douro Superior, where the effects of the American diseases were far less violently felt. Today, this massive rock formation still stands conspicuously like a bare mass, but with vineyards on both sides. By the end of the 19 th century, Phylloxera had destroyed approximately 65% of all vineyards in the Douro. But even more devastating than Phylloxera was the competition of Port-like products made all over Europe, which abused the Porto brand name on their labels.

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