PORT

The upper reaches of the Douro valley in north eastern Portugal became the world's first legally demarcated wine region in 1756 when the then king designated them as such. Only wine made from grapes grown in this region can be sold as "port". The name is taken from the port of Porto, which is situated a couple of miles upstream from the point at which the river empties into the Atlantic. The grapes, grown on steep (up to 30% gradient) rocky terraces, are harvested in the autumn and pressed by foot trampling (though robotic machines are slowly beginning to replace hoary men's feet). However, instead of letting the fermentation process take place for ten days or so, as in the case of wine, it is stopped after two days by adding grape brandy, which is why port has an alcohol content of 20-22% instead of wine's more normal 12-15%.

After spending the winter on the quinta or estate, the wine is transported down to warehouses in Porto, where it matures, before it is bottled and shipped. In olden times, the trip down the rocky river on special boats was pretty hazardous, but after damming the river and improving the road network it is no longer a life or death experience. In the warehouse, the wine is kept in oak barrels, huge vats for ruby port and small casks for tawny (it is the greater contact with the wood that gives the wine its tawny colour). Vintage port is a ruby port, usually the pick of the season, that is bottled after a mere two years or so in a vat, and then ages in the bottle itself. These ports command the highest prices, but there is always a risk that when they are opened, they are undrinkable (if, for instance, air has got in and contaminated it). Incidentally, used port barrels are highly prized by Scotch whisky makers, who buy them up before using them for their own particular tipple.

Britain has always been active in the port business. Portugal was England's first ever ally, way back in the time of Edward III in the fourteenth century, and the Treaty of Windsor in 1386 gave merchants from both countries equal production and trading rights. A century or so later a significant amount of port was being shipped to England, mainly in return for salt cod. In 1654 a new commercial treaty strengthened those rights, which were consolidated when the English king Charles II married a Portuguese princess Catherine of Braganza. However, what really gave a boost to the port market was Charles' long-running dispute with Louis XIV of France, which led first to increased duties on French wine and and then a total import ban. Entrepreneurial Brits took the opportunity to find an alternative wine source in Portugal. In those days, port was not a fortified wine as such, but the habit started of adding brandy to help preserve it during the long sea voyage. Quality control was strengthened with the 1756 designation (roughly a century before a similar exercise in Bordeaux). This was a reaction to the disastrous Lisbon earthquake which had taken place on 1 November the previous year, following which there was a move under the Marquis of Pombal to greater state control in many areas of Portuguese life.

My wife and I learned all this and much more recently during a tour of the warehouse in Porto of Graham's, perhaps the most aristocratic of the port labels (it was the favourite port of Winston Churchill, for instance). For a modest Euros10, you got the tour of their recently renovated warehouse complex on the south side of the river, plus the chance to sample six glasses of their port, three ruby and three tawny. I am not a great wine expert, but I know what I like, and I have to say that I like port rather a lot. Six glasses of port on a rather hot July afternoon is quite a lot. Since we had already had one free glass at another warehouse in the morning, and had another one as a nightcap in the main square of Porto that evening, I can honestly say that I have never drunk so much of the stuff in one day as I did then.

Walter Blotscher