By Amy Louise Pommier
 Single
Quinta Ports are not exactly newcomers to the world wine
scene. But the Quinta do Vesuvio, a refurbished landmark
in Portugal's Douro Valley, is leading the way in making
the world view these wines -- so long overshadowed by "Vintage
Ports" -- in a new light.
The revival of this great Douro estate following its
purchase in 1989 by the Symingtons, one of the two most
prominent British Port shippers, signals a revolutionizing
of the way that connoisseurs regard Port. Perhaps more
fundamentally, it marks a change in producers' and shippers'
approaches to making and marketing it.
If one were to compare the production and selling of
Port with that of some other historically prestigious
region's wines, Champagne rather than Bordeaux might
come to mind for one overriding reason. Most of the great
Champagnes (as well as the lesser ones), like the best-known
Vintage Ports, are the refined results of the blender's
art. The blender generally works with choice grapes from
various properties to produce a wine with a recognizable
house style. Also, Vintage and Tete de Cuvee Champagnes,
like Vintage Ports, are released only in better vintage
years. The Grand Cru wines of Bordeaux, on the other
hand, are wines made from the grapes of single estates,
released every year. The best of the Bordeaux chateau
sites have been officially recognized for over a century
as being capable of producing consistently superior wine.
The 1855 classification of the Medoc codified this hierarchy,
which was based on historical precedent and has not been
greatly modified since.
The Douro Valley, where Port is made, was actually the
first wine-producing area to have been officially assessed,
almost a century before the Medoc, in 1757. The Pombaline
demarcation, named for the prime minister, the Marques
de Pombal, was instituted in an effort at quality control.
The borders of the steep mountainous sites that were
deemed to produce better wine were marked with stakes.
Vesuvio was at that time not yet in the picture as a
famous Port estate, since it lies far "up the Douro," only
28 miles west of the Spanish border. The "Douro
Superior" was inaccessible by boat --a boulder in
the river and its vigorous cataract made passage impossible--and
boats were the only means of getting wine to Oporto,
where it was shipped to England and elsewhere. Records
of the Quinta do Vesuvio go back to the 16th century,
but in the early days grain was its main crop.
The estate's Port history began in 1823, when the land
was leased in perpetuity to Antonio Bernardo Ferreira,
uncle and father-in-law of Dona Antonia Ferreira, the
legendary 19th century doyenne of Port. Dona Antonia,
who was affectionately known as "La Ferreirinha," possessed
an empire of more than 30 quintas by the time she died
in 1896. Vesuvio's property, large from the outset, was
increased substantially through her efforts. It currently
encompasses 1008 acres, its perimeter measuring almost
nine-and-one-half miles, a third of which fronts the
Douro river. Hundreds of thousands of vines were planted
by Dona Antonia's uncle and expanded and managed by her
husband, then by herself when she was widowed. In the
19th century the estate's wine and Dona Antonia's lavish
entertaining were renowned. Bottles of mid-19th-century
Port specifically from the Quinta do Vesuvio, although
extremely rare, still exist, and sold at auction in the
early 1990s for over $600 the bottle.
Port and the estates on which it is made have suffered
more extreme viscissitudes than Bordeaux and Champagne.
Wars, changing tastes and natural disasters (phylloxera
was only one of three vine epidemics since the mid-1800s),
have kept the fortunes of the Port trade on a oller-coaster
course. Dona Antonia, along with acquiring land and entertaining
guests on a grand scale, instituted innovative aspects
of vineyard management generally thought to have come
about later: selecting lots of superior grape varieties
to be vinified separately and planting some vines vertically
on the hillsides. But while 346 acres of Vesuvio were
planted to vines in 1865, by 1988 vines covered only
210 acres, and the property had become rather derelict.
Ten thousand olive trees had been planted after phylloxera
ravaged the vines, but these turned out to be unprofitable
and in turn were left untended. In 1973, with a damming
of the Douro that raised the water level by more than
30 feet, Vesuvio lost some of its best vineyards.
The British shippers, always prominent in the Port trade,
increased their purchases of quintas in the late 19th
century, when the estates became available at bargain
prices due to the state of decay into which many of them
had fallen. Vesuvio remained in the hands of ever more
numerous members of the Ferreira family for a century
more.
Rather than continuing to separately sell the wine from
individual estates, though, by the end of the 19th century
many shippers had adopted the concept of blending. It
gave them greater latitude for producing a significant
quantity of consistently good wine from year to year.
By the first decade of the 20th century the shippers
also firmed up a trend begun in the 1870s (following
phylloxera) of declaring fewer "vintages." Previously,
in almost every year when good wine was available it
had been shipped under the house name, as "Vintage." But
the distinction of declaring only three to four years
(at most) in a decade became the norm, and has remained
so since. The shippers' Vintage Ports were and are considered
their very best wine, now only a small part (under 5%)
of total Port production, one of the quality standards
being ageworthiness. Some of the shippers, such as Taylor,
Fladgate & Yeatman, derive much but not all of their
Vintage Port from their own properties (Vargellas and
Terra Feita, for Taylor Port), giving the wine a consistent
personality, while a certain amount of purchased wine
rounds out the blend. Other shippers purchase the majority
of the wine or grapes for their Vintage Ports.
Until only a decade ago, all Port was required by law
to be warehoused in Vila Nova de Gaia, across the Douro
from Oporto, before being shipped abroad. The shippers
owned the warehouses and so effectively had a monopoly
on exporting Port. Small producers up the Douro did not
have the option of shipping directly on their own.
Some owners of wine-producing properties were increasingly
inclined to challenge this arrangement. They wished to
bottle their own production, warehouse it on their property,
and ship and market it directly. Eventually, in 1986,
a law was passed that enabled them to do so, though still
with some restrictions. This law may have far-reaching
effects for the Port trade and for consumers--effects
that have only begun to be felt. Several independent
producers are now selling their own Port, under their
own label, abroad: Quinta do Infantado, Quinta de la
Rosa, and Miguel Champalimaud of Quinta do Cotto are
choice examples.
In a newsmaking purchase in 1989, the Symingtons (who
already owned the Port houses of Graham, Dow, Warre,
Smith-Woodhouse and Gould-Campbell) spent $2.5 million
to acquire the Quinta do Vesuvio, and they have since
spent millions more renovating the estate. What distinguishes
this acquisition from most earlier purchases of estates
by British houses (including the Symingtons' Quinta do
Bomfim and Quinta dos Malvedos) was that Vesuvio's wine
was intended from the outset to be bottled on its own
under the Quinta do Vesuvio label, in every year in which
sufficiently good Port is produced. Rather than creating
a blend as they do in declared vintage years with the
wines from their other quintas, the Symingtons are bottling
this estate's wine on its own, with the characteristics
of different vintages showing their individual qualities--all
as variations on Vesuvio.
Single Quinta Port has unfortunately been a murky concept
in the Portugese wine regulations. Many wines bottled
under quinta names are in fact the products of the grapes
of a single estate, but the "estate" might
contain parcels that extend over a wide area; how wide
an area is not dictated. But a more serious source of
ambiguity is that no regulations require that a wine
labled with a quinta name actually come from that property.
Some quinta-named Ports are really only "brand names" and
undermine the efforts of producers of fine Port from
individual properties to establish the value of their
wine. Another aspect of the confusion surrounding the
perception of "Single Quinta Port" is that
as blended Vintage Ports were considered the "creme
de la creme," the "Single Quinta" bottlings
of the major British houses in non-declared years were,
though very fine Ports, not held in the esteem (esthetically
or monetarily) of "true Vintage Port."
Vesuvio plays a pivotal role in redefining "Single
Quinta Port" and "Vintage Port," since
it is now owned by a family whose best Vintage Ports
have long been highly respected and prized by connoisseurs.
James Symington has said that he would like Vesuvio to
be considered "the Petrus of Port." The first
vintages released in the US (1990, 1991 and 1992) reveal
that indeed much effort is being put into producing a
fine, intense, ageworthy Port, in a style that emphasizes
elegance. Only a limited portion (3,000 cases per vintage
at present) of the estate's production is bottled as
Vesuvio. The grapes are trodden by foot, a method several
makers of the best Ports feel is unequaled for producing
top-quality wine. Supplementing this traditional phase
of the winemaking process with modern advantages, however,
the Symingtons have installed an elaborate temperature
control system to keep the must properly cool during
fermentation. Looking ahead, they also have planted 80,000
new vines.
The releases of the new Single Quinta Ports are a positive
development with a range of possible ramifications. It
will be interesting to see whether there will be a growing
appreciation of what an individual property, with its
specificity of terroir, can produce. Will connoisseurs
and collectors come to view Ports more as they do Bordeaux,
with the name of a Port becoming more indelibly associated
with the name of the particular property where the grapes
are grown? Will wine lovers who covet the limited-production
low-yield bottlings of winemakers from Burgundy and Piedmont
come to regard Port with new interest? Those who value
individual character in fine wines have cause for rejoicing.
Smaller, lesser-known estates' Single Quinta Ports are
a growing presence on the international market. Vesuvio,
with a history to live up to, is in a position to set
the standard for this type of Port, and perhaps help
make it the preeminent genre. In any event, the future
course of Vesuvio will be a highly visible one.
Article © 2002-2006, Amy
Louise Pommier
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