136 Port anD the Douro
(thereby allowing more skin contact) without having to allow for the difference in Baumé
between the press wine and the free-run juice. Charles Symington, Graham’s winemaker,
points out that both traditional and robotic lagares need to be trodden for about four
hours ‘which suggests that the simulation we have achieved is very close to the traditional
method’. At the time of writing the Symingtons have sixteen robotic lagares at Quinta
do Sol, Graham’s Quinta dos Malvedos, Dow’s Quinta Senhora da Ribeira and Warre’s
Quinta de Cavadinha. There are also two lagares made to the same design at Quinta Nova
Nossa Senhora do Carmo. A logical but radical extension of the Symington’s idea might
be a mobile robotic lagar that can be used to tread the grapes in outlying quintas, thereby
taking the winemaking process back to the days before centralised wineries were built in
the early 1960s.
Both the Symington Family Estates and the Fladgate Partnership (the group
comprising Taylor, Fonseca, Croft) are at pains to point out that they are not about to
give up traditional foot treading entirely. The Symington family still makes around 2,000
pipes (over a million litres) in the traditional way, and Taylor and Fonseca still tread
virtually all the grapes from their own quintas with a resident team of around a hundred
people. However, about 70 per cent of the lote making up Graham’s most recent vintage
Port has been trodden by robotic lagar. Some quintas, such as Graham’s Malvedos and
Warre’s Cavadinha, may have lost the old team spirit described so vividly by Portuguese
author Miguel Torga in his novel Vindima (‘Vintage’), but they have benefited greatly
from investment in robotic footwork. Added to which, the robotic roga is not distracted
during vintage by the occasional romantic tryst and robots never answer back, demand a
glass of bagaceira or a cigarette!
Pink Port
Pink or rosé Port is a relatively new category that emerged in the late 2000s. The method
of production varies from shipper to shipper, with colour varying accordingly from salmon
pink to pale ruby. It is made with juice drained from red grapes, given minimal skin contact
and followed by cold settling to clean the must prior to fermentation. Fermentation takes
place in stainless steel at around 16°C over a period of five to six days before must is run
off and fortified leaving 60–90 grammes of residual sugar. The quality of the aguardente is
vital if the delicate fruit flavours are not to be overpowered, so the fortifying spirit should
be as neutral as possible (see below). The wine is bottled young and shipped within twelve
months of the harvest.
white Port
Compared to red, white Port has customarily been treated as something of an afterthought.
White grapes (traditionally found interplanted among red varieties) tend to arrive at the
winery in dribs and drabs and a number of days can elapse before there is a sufficient