History of Port Wine

Port is one of the world’s great fortified wines — sweet, strong and long-lived — born in the savage, sun-baked terraces of the Douro Valley in northern Portugal. Its story is a tale of two nations, English merchants and Portuguese growers, and of a wine so important that its region became the first in the world to be mapped and protected by law¹.

Wine from the world’s hardest vineyards

The Douro is one of the most dramatic and punishing wine landscapes on earth: schist mountainsides so steep that vineyards must be cut into them as narrow stone terraces, baking in summer heat. The wine made here is fortified — grape spirit is added during fermentation, halting it while the wine is still sweet and boosting its strength — then aged in cellars downriver at Vila Nova de Gaia¹.

The British thirst

Port is, in large part, a British invention. When wars with France cut England off from claret, thirsty English merchants turned to Portugal, and the Methuen Treaty of 1703 sealed the bond by taxing Portuguese wine far more lightly than French. British firms — names like Taylor, Graham, Cockburn and Sandeman — set up lodges at Vila Nova de Gaia and built the Port trade into an empire².

The birth of fortification

At first, brandy was simply added to the wine to help it survive the sea voyage to England. Over time, growers learned to add the spirit earlier, during fermentation, so that the finished wine kept its natural sweetness and strength — the technique that defines Port. Only between about 1820 and 1840 did this fortification settle into the rich, sweet style we know today³.

Add the spirit before the sugar is gone, and you capture the wine sweet and strong forever.— the principle of Port³

Pombal and the first demarcated region

Such a valuable trade attracted fraud, and in 1756 Portugal’s reforming minister, the Marquês de Pombal, struck back. He created a state company to control the Port trade and, crucially, marked out the exact boundaries of the Douro where true Port grapes could grow. That demarcation made the Douro the world’s first regulated wine region — the ancestor of every appellation system since⁴.

Vintage and tawny

Port comes in many guises. Ruby is young, deep and fruity; Tawny is aged for years in cask until it turns amber and nutty; and the pinnacle, Vintage Port, is made only in the finest “declared” years, bottled young and left to mature for decades into something profound. There are also White Port, Late Bottled Vintage and single-harvest Colheitas — a whole family of wines⁵.

The Douro today

The terraced Douro is now a UNESCO World Heritage landscape, and the region has reinvented itself once more. Alongside its historic fortified wines, growers increasingly make powerful dry Douro reds from the same native grapes, above all Touriga Nacional. Port remains its glory, but the Douro is no longer a one-wine valley⁶.

Frequently asked questions

Read more

• The wider story of Portuguese wine
• Madeira, Portugal’s other great fortified wine
• The French wine that Port replaced in Britain

References

1. Encyclopaedia Britannica — Port (wine). www.britannica.com ↩
2. Fonseca — The History of the Douro Valley. www.fonseca.pt ↩
3. WSET — The History of Port. www.wsetglobal.com ↩
4. For The Love Of Port — The Methuen-Pombal Link and the Demarcation of the Douro. www.fortheloveofport.com ↩
5. IVDP — Instituto dos Vinhos do Douro e do Porto. www.ivdp.pt ↩
6. The Wine Society — Vinous Milestones in Portuguese History. www.thewinesociety.com ↩

Recommended reading

Vintage: The Story of Wine
Hugh Johnson
Rich on Port, the British trade and the taming of the Douro.

A Short History of Wine
Rod Phillips
Good on fortified wines and the birth of wine regulation.

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