Porto, or Oporto, is a small town of 3,00,000 people. The city is on the banks of the Douro river, the very mouth actually, as it empties into the Atlantic. In old times, there was a tax levied for storing wines in Oporto, which led to everyone transferring their shipping houses across the river, to Vila Nova di Gaia, which is then the true town of Port, the one with the characteristic warehouses and boats lazing about; stuff that is total tourist postcard material. Porto is where you stand to get the best pictures!
Staying at The Yeatman hotel sort of puts you on the side that looks onto Oporto and is a short walk down to the river. A short but steep walk. Get ready to burn calories, both ways.
Here are some salient features of Port wines
n Lagars: I honestly thought that nobody crushed grapes under their feet anymore and I couldn?t be more far from the truth. In Portugal, the best wines are not only crushed under the feet of a dozen dancing men or so (OK, not exactly dancing), they are even often fermented in the Lagars?so much for reducing oxygen contact. But Joana, the winemaker from Vila Dona Maria said that it was never a problem, and Dirk reiterated how this oxygen actually endows longevity to the wine. Also, the way the feet rub against the berries, gently crushing them against the not-too-uniform stone surface, the result was a soft extraction rather than a coarse, cold one.
n Field blends: Portugal lives on with its ancient vineyards, where ancestors planted a variety of grapes side by side. Some, like Dirk and Manuel (from Crasto), believe that this was for a deeper bigger reason, one that escapes us for the moment, but there are others, like Vito from Vale de Me?o, who say that the ancestors were clueless and hence this is not so good an idea.
n Although the wine is called Port(o) and the town is called Oporto, the real town of this famous fortified wine is Vila Nova de Gaia, for that is where all the warehouses are located. An ancient rule taxed wines more if they were stocked in Oporto, thereby encouraging shippers to build warehouses across the river, on the other bank, aka Vila Nova de Gaia (VNdG). Those lovely picture postcards that you can see with the different Port house signs and the ?rebelo? boats parked up front?well that?s VNdG. Sorry if that broke your heart.
n Another cruel law that existed decree that, only those houses which had a warehouse in VNdG could export their Port wine and others had to sell it locally. This pretty much paved the way for the giants to dominate the export market, which explains why so many small houses either ceased to exist, or eventually got swallowed by the mammoths of the trade. Today, that rule stands abolished so Port from Douro is making its way into international waters. But it was only in 1984 that this rule was abolished so, not all that long ago really.
n And while on that, Port is perhaps the only classified wine where the vineyards are so far away from the warehouse where the wines are bottled. Interesting how history and precedence can over-rule legislation. Thank God for that!
n Douro is the world?s first appellation, in the sense that it was well defined and demarcated back circa 1750s by the Marquis of Pombal, who went as far as to designate vineyards from ?A?, down to ?F? categories. These were logically drawn out after analysing exposure, soil type, inclination, location, temperature and precipitation quotients, and also the grape varieties planted. Based on the classification, the winemaker could only harvest a fixed amount of crop annually.
There is one more law: one that says that Port from anywhere else is not to be christened so. So Australia calls it simply, Tawny, or Ruby. India makes it too and it is the one reason why I am inclined to disown Goa. If the other allegations of debauchery weren?t degrading enough, this local insipid potent is more of a reason of shame for the state.
The writer is a sommelier