Howkins - Rich, rare & red: a guide to port

PORT.A simple four letter word that somehow, over 300 years later, still manages to conjure up a sense of well-being, of style, and, at the end of dinner, of great satisfaction. Like all success stories, ports position in the wider international wine portfolio is the result of dedicated hard work, innovation and an uncanny ability to connect with todays consumers. Its success is ensured by a blend of the unimpeachable provenance that only old world wines can command and a desire to use state of the art technology to create wines that continue to delight our taste buds.

Port still enjoys the cultural dichotomy of being served at the grandest of dinner tables and in the most informal of bars and brasseries as an aperitif. Long may the French, the Belgians and the Dutch continue to absorb over fifty per cent of all port produced in this latter way. After all, drinking young port as an aperitif is just as virtuous as drinking a glass of Chardonnay.

Port becomes grand vin when the winemaker selects the best blends to be at their peak in ten years (aged tawnies), ten to fifteen years (single quintas), twenty years (aged tawnies and vintage) or even longer. It is this premium category that is happily increasing, led as always by the UK and US markets. Since Rich, Rare and Red was first published over thirty years ago, the winemakers have become wiser and wine consumers choosier. Significant advances in viticultural technology in the Douro Valley have produced consistently better wines, at all quality levels, since the turn of the twenty-first century. Terroir research continues to deliver more elegant wines. Consumers are benefiting year by year. We have seen the inexorable rise of the Australian wine industry; the re-emergence of South African wines; pre-phylloxera delights from Chile; the burgeoning East European wineries; garagiste wines from Napa and Bordeaux; and France, that great provider of wines, continuing to assert itself in all its many regions.

Over this time, the port shippers can be proud of their achievements in relation to the other great fortified wines of the Iberian Peninsula. Sherry has had a torrid time, yet is climbing back through its fino and dry oloroso styles. Madeira remains a touch becalmed. Yet port sails on majestically. There always seem to be steady hands on the tiller. A few rocky seas may have to be navigated, but, in general, the consumer knows what he or she is getting.

I am privileged to have seen the port trade at first hand from the early 1960s through to the early 2010s. In the 1960s, most ports were bottled outside Portugal. These were blends chosen by wine merchants in each country and usually bottled under their own labels. The Douro was in the hinterland of wine producing best practices. Vintage ports were wondrous, but inexpensive.

In the 1970s, I was a director of Croft & Company and the trade gradually took control of its own destiny by bottling its own brands in Portugal. The US market took off. Bulldozers built terraces in the Douro rather than man.

The 1980s and 1990s saw the port shippers buying more and more quintas in the Douro to secure sources of supply and increase their asset values. The port trade steadied, more and more patamares were constructed in the Douro, the quality of grape spirit was in question and the twenty-first century was gratefully welcomed.

The 2000s and 2010s have seen gigantic leaps forward in viticultural progress in the Douro. Premium brands have consistently increased in major markets. Shippers have reinvested wisely both in the Douro and in their state of the art visitor centres in Gaia. Shippers have a more confident spring in the step to bring about necessary reforms in the Douro and to bang the port drum loudly in the market place.