Port Wine

Port Wine (i.e. Porto or Oporto Wine), a species of red wine, hot and heady, which is produced chiefly in a mountainous district of Portugal, called Cima de Douro, and exported from Oporto and Lisbon. The wine from which this wine is produced is generally planted on craggy slopes with a southern exposure. The wine, when pure and unadulterated (which is very seldom the case), does not acquire its full strength and flavour till it has stood for some years, to allow for the disturbance of the spirit to subside, and the antagonistic ingredients of the mixture to harmonise; but care must likewise be taken that it is not allowed to become too old. The colour of new port wine varies from pale rose to deep red, and changes with age, becoming a deep tawny brown, which is permanent. By far the greater portion of the wine made is mixed with spirit even during the time of fermentation, in order to give the new wine the ripeness and strength which exporters require, and which the wine does not naturally attain till it has stood for some time; the proper colour is also given by a mixture known as jeropiga, which is a preparation of elder-berries, molasses, raisin-juice, and spirit. It is an excess of this jeropiga in the inferior sorts of port which communicates to them the medicated odour so frequently noticed. The extreme 'headiness' of port is chiefly due to the liberal admixture with spirit, and this is the case with all the sorts generally exported, which average 35 per cent. of proof spirit. From the time when port came into demand (about 1700, though it was known in England for a considerable time before this) down to 1826 its export was a monopoly in the hands of the English merchants; and the amount of wine produced increased, with tolerable steadiness, year after year, till the three years ending 1840, when it reached 34,790 pipes of 126 gallons. The ultimate effect of this monopoly of the Oporto Wine Company was to increase the price of port wine in England, and at the same time so to deteriorate its quality that in course of time it became of less demand, and was largely supplanted by southern French and other wines. Since that period it has fluctuated, being sometimes more and sometimes less than this figure; in 1850 the exportation reached 37,487 pipes. Between 1880 and 1895 the exports to Great Britain ranged from 3,000,000 to 4,000,000 gallons (not all for consumption in that country), and the value from £900,000 to £1,340,000. The natural port wine, with less than 26 per cent. of proof spirit, is very wholesome and invigorating. The exports of port wine from Oporto in 1880 were 55,700 pipes, valued at £1,471,000, but in the years 1880-97 decreased considerably on the whole.